“It’s too hot in here,” Mrs. Gressly, wearing a pink pants suit, said. “Where’s the thermostat?”
Mr. and Mrs. Davis looked at each other and then looked away. Mr. Cobb, the realtor, stared at his thumbnail.
Not hearing her demand answered, Mrs. Gressly decided to ignore the issue. After all, it was not her house and the way she felt at the moment, it just might never be. She told herself she was distinctly less than satisfied, and silently formulated her feelings of the moment in exactly that way.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with the insulation,” Mr. Cobb said, answering her obliquely. Mrs. Gressly thought a moment, relating this to her complaint about the heat. Then she understood: it was cold outside, therefore the fact that the house was too hot was meant to indicate that it was not leaking warmth, the way a less well insulated house might.
She sniffed contemptuously at such a shoddy concession to reason. If she had been a real estate person, she thought, she would have attacked the issue forthrightly and won. But of course, if she had been anyone else, she would have agreed with herself as she now was. Any other option for a sensible person was unthinkable.
“And here’s the porch,” Mr. Cobb said, waving his open hand vaguely toward the rear. It was a sloppy gesture, for if it had been meant seriously, he would have been calling the television set the porch.
Mr. Cobb was a short fat man with light caramel-colored skin and bushy white sideburns. He bore a reproachful, startled expression that Mrs. Gressly found utterly ludicrous. He’d complained of a stuffy nose twice already. When he walked, his head glided like that of a man coasting on a bicycle. He was informed, but feckless.
“That’s true,” Mrs. Davis said, nodding. “The house is pretty well insulated.”
Mrs. Gressly turned and stared at her a minute, wondering how she could respond to something so belatedly. Mrs. Davis was thin and young, with straggly pale hair. She wore a faded green wool serape and seemed to have a head cold, too. Mrs. Gressly decided that Mrs. Davis was not only lacking in energy but also not very bright, like a lot of women her age. But of course, that couldn’t be helped. And anyway, it wasn’t any of Mrs. Gressly’s business, yet. Mrs. Gressly didn’t meddle in things that were not, strictly speaking, her business.
And at the moment it wasn’t certain whether or not this house would be her business or not. She had a checkbook in her purse, and if she decided she wanted it, she could write out a check for Mr. Cobb right away. A binder for the whole kit and caboodle.
And then it happened. Just before stepping out onto the back porch, Mrs. Gressly smelled pipe tobacco. She paused and sniffed audibly. Twice, three times. She did not say anything, but she trusted that her displeasure was fully communicated. She also decided at that moment to buy this house, just so she could work at evicting the Davises. Because there was no doubt about it: he was a pipe smoker, and she would not tolerate the odor of tobacco in any house she owned. Not for long, she wouldn’t.
The back porch was lofty and looked out over a ravine. Since the house was situated on a steep hill, the door at ground level in back led directly into the basement. Mrs. Gressly had come in through the basement, liking to take houses by surprise. Mr. Cobb had followed her, sniffing and mumbling real estate cliches at her back.
Now, astride some invisible Bucephelus, Mrs. Gressly gazed out upon her ravine and found it distasteful. It had the look of being used too much. She knew the sort of place: dirty plastic food wrappers floating in the muddy water of the creek and boys with dirt-smeared legs playing with war toys in the underbrush. Also a variety of beer bottles and pop cans festering in the pale grass.
“How do you spell your name?”
Slowly, Mrs. Gressly turned and saw Mr. Davis standing there behind her, puffing on his pipe. The pipe. He had just lit it, and the stink of tobacco filtered out past her shoulder into the soft evening air, toward the maple trees by the garage.
“What was that?” she asked.
Mr. Davis nodded, as if he’d expected her not to understand. “I’m interested in names,” he said. “Surnames. It’s my field.”
“He’s a professor at the university,” Mr. Cobb said lugubriously. “Professor Davis.”
“Call me Gary,” Professor Davis said, puffing heavily on his pipe. For a moment Mrs. Gressly seemed confused. She had not been prepared for such a question. Nobody ever asked about her name, but there was a very interesting story behind her name. She didn’t quite like the idea of somebody like this Gary Davis (who was awfully young to call himself a professor, she thought) asking an interesting question.
But she couldn’t refuse an answer, so she lifted her chin and said, “It was my husband’s name, of course, and originally it was Swiss. It was spelled 'G-r-o-e-s-t-l-i’: Groestli. His great-grandfather changed the spelling as a condition for marriage into an old American family named Perkins. He was reputed to have said that his wife was well worth the sacrifice. She was said to have had a lovely singing voice. A ravishing creature. I often advised my husband to change it back to the old world spelling, but he wouldn’t listen to me. None of my business, I suppose!” Mrs. Groestli ended her explanation with a harsh laugh.
“Your husband has passed away, then?” Mr. Davis asked politely, raising his eyebrows.
Mrs. Groestli gave a hollow laugh at such an impudent question. “That’s the precise term for it,” she said ambiguously. “Passed away. Not necessarily dead, mind you, but passed away!” She said this as if there might be some obscure connection between his refusal to restore the original spelling of his name and his absence at this moment.
Mr. Cobb stamped his foot on the porch. “Solid as a rock,” he said. “Solid oak. Double flooring, even out here on the porch. They don’t build them like this anymore. Solid as a rock.”
At that moment, for no apparent reason, Mrs. Groestli was filled with a sudden, wrathful intolerance, and she fastened upon poor Mr. Cobb’s locution. Why did they always say solid as a rock? a needlessly anguished voice cried out in her head. Why didn’t they say as solid as a noodle? Or as solid as a party hat? Or as solid as a week of Sundays?
Mrs. Groestli burrowed deeper into the house. She was not one to waste a dollar, and, as anybody could tell you, she knew real estate, inside and out. She had six houses in town already, and this would make the seventh. She kept tight records and knew where every penny went. She knew the price of Venetian blinds and cement block; she knew where to get roofing nails at a bargain price, and had forty squares of unused roofing shingle stored over a double garage on Poplar Street, just waiting for the first complaint about a leaky roof.
The Davises began to lag behind, and finally drifted off. That was as it should be. Mr. Cobb trailed along after her, jabbering about the house, as if anything he might ever say would influence her one way or the other. She was one person who would buy or not buy; she would not be sold. Especially by anybody as dopey as Mr. Cobb, who talked like he had his mind on other things.
Mrs. Groestli descended to the basement, whence she’d come. She heard Mr. Cobb’s feet pattering down the steps behind her. The basement smelled of dampness and old truck tires. She hated such smells. Turning left, behind the furnace, she was brought up sharp by the sight of a full-length mirror that the Davises had stored there, face out, for some incomprehensible reason. It showed her in an unflattering light, in spite of the darkness. The mirror made her look shorter and dumpier than she really was. It made her pants suit pinker. It made her head look bigger than necessary, not to mention her hands and shoes. Her shoes looked enormous, and yet she had to admit that they fit snug enough. She walked as if she were stamping out little fires, and knew it very well, but some things can’t be helped.
She heard Mr. Cobb breathing behind her right shoulder. For once he was not trying to explain things for her benefit. She gazed into the slanted mirror, leaning against the dirty wall, and then heard him say, “Mirror.”
She turned and placed a gaze of utter disgust upon him, but he didn’t seem to
notice. Instead, he took a nasal inhaler out of his pocket and prodded it up his nostril. She could smell it, and had to admit that it was better than tobacco smoke, but not much.
While he was intent upon sniffing the inhaler, she brushed past him, headed for another part of the basement. Her contempt for him was impossible to conceal, even though she doubted he would ever notice anything. He wasn’t the type.
The fact was, he had no idea whatsoever of why she needed to buy this house, and wasn’t even aware that she was going to get it, no matter what he might say about it.
Furious gabber that she could also be upon occasion, she nevertheless held this secret to her breast and nourished it.
That secret reason had to do with Clyde Brickie, the owner of this house. Like Mrs. Groestli, Clyde Brickie was also an owner of properties. He owned Brickie’s Hardware, where he spent most of his time and energy, but he also owned a double on Mill Street and four student rooming houses in the east end of town. There was something about a farm in Carthage Township, too; but Mrs. Groestli was a little vague about this.
Why Clyde Brickie wanted to sell this house she was now in was beyond understanding. The instant she heard about it, she’d wondered, for she knew it was in good repair; but just to make sure, she’d phoned Anse Tober and checked with him, along with Becky Thurman at the court house. She’d pushed all the buttons, and they’d all flashed green, for go ahead.
Which left Clyde Brickie’s role in the whole business unclear. Not that Mrs. Groestli didn’t love a mystery, but she preferred the kind that were clear and above board. This was something a little different, and if she’d been the type, she would have been uneasy. As it was, however, she knew from the instant she’d heard about it that she had to get this house from Clyde Brickie. In spite of the little games of indecision she’d played with herself, there had never been any doubt. Nobody else would have this house. There was nothing she’d let stop her.
Mrs. Groestli took pride in the conviction that she never lied to herself. And she wasn’t about to start lying in a matter as crucial as this. Clyde Brickie’s wife had died last summer, and maybe his selling the house had to do with that. Maybe he was going to liquidate all his holdings in town, including his hardware store, and move to Arizona. The thought of this was like a brick in Mrs. Groestli’s stomach. She wanted to be victorious over Clyde Brickie; she didn’t want him to escape. It was that simple.
But how simple was that? The answer was complicated, but it had to do with the fact that Clyde Brickie and Mrs. Groestli (whose name had then been Emily Fogle) had once dated in high school. It had been Clyde Brickie who had taken her maidenhead one Friday night in the back seat of his father’s Packard, after the game with Harrisburg.
Mrs. Groestli would never forget that moment, as what woman would? But the fact was, or seemed to be, that Clyde Brickie had forgotten; or (even more unsettling) it appeared that for Clyde the whole business hadn’t even taken place … as if it had been her own personal illusion, in which Clyde Brickie had played a part as a sort of animated lover. An incubus, or whatever they were called.
Because not long after that (to her) momentous happening, Clyde had eloped with Ginny Deems, and when the two of them returned a week later, Emily Fogle (who would someday become Mrs. Groestli) might just as well have been a lamppost or fireplug, so far as Clyde Brickie was concerned.
Ginny Deems, as Mrs. Clyde Brickie, got twin boys and a daughter out of him, not to mention one of the finest houses in town and yearly visits to Arizona, where Clyde’s older brother owned a department store.
All Mrs. Groestli got was Mr. Groestli, and the most interesting thing about him was his name, which he’d disavowed anyway, so far as the spelling went.
The second most interesting thing about Mr. Groestli, however, was that he’d left her. Passed away. After his departure, Mrs. Groestli fancied that he might have been more interesting than she really knew he was for all those years, but she didn’t dwell on such speculations long, for she was not a woman to fool herself.
The old wall between the living room and dining room had been knocked out, giving an effect of spaciousness to the first floor. The Davises, for all their untidy ways, had shown good taste in furnishing it (although it was too dark, especially now, without a single lamp burning), and there were long, shaggy green plants hanging from wicker baskets and bright red and green wall pieces on the dark inner paneling. The legs of a huge oak dining room table had been cut off, converting it into a coffee table. Two similar mousy sofas bracketed it.
Passing through this room again, Mrs. Groestli was interrupted by Mrs. Davis calling out to her.
“What?” Mrs. Groestli asked, turning her head and frowning into the naked light from the windows, which haloed the girl’s dark image.
“I asked if you’d like to join us in a glass of wine,” she said, “You and Mr. Cobb.”
“Me and Mr. Cobb,” Mrs. Groestli repeated judiciously. What was their angle? Did they think they could buy her off with a glass of wine?
But Mrs. Groestli had learned when to distrust her distrust, and she had a considerable arsenal for coping with it; as she did now, by graciously accepting and plodding across the floor until she reached the coffee table.
There Professor Davis sat, practically invisible in the darkness of the chair. A mere boy, with his pipe in his mouth and his head full of names.
“Don’t you people ever turn on the lights?” Mrs. Groestli inquired as she accepted the glass of wine from Mrs. Davis. It was rose, she observed.
“We like it dark,” the girl said, and suddenly appeared much older. If Mrs. Groestli had taken the time, she could have visualized perfectly how Mrs. Davis would look when she was her age. And the poor girl would not have been pleased by the prospect.
“Swiss,” Mr. Davis said. Then he added, “It sounds Swiss, the way you spell it.”
That was a marvelously addled statement, Mrs. Groestli thought, for a professor of English.
She sipped at her rosé, still standing. And then she was aware that Mrs. Davis had been talking to her in her little birdy voice. She had been inviting her to sit down.
Heavily, carefully, holding her glass of rose at ear level, like a lighted 4th of July sparkler, Mrs. Groestli settled herself into the heaviest, ugliest chair in the room, where she felt herself loom over the great round coffee table, not to mention the two children playing house beneath her elbows. Mr. Cobb was standing some distance away, his nose only a foot and a half from a horse print he was studying on the wall. What he could see in the darkness, Mrs. Groestli couldn’t imagine, but she let it go. She knew she interfered too much in other people’s lives, but if you had ideals and principles, you couldn’t help it. People did so many marvelously foolish things, they needed the Mrs. Groestlis of this world to straighten them out a little. Only, God knows, it’s a lonely job.
Mrs. Groestli sighed, and then listened to Professor Davis, who was talking about the print Mr. Cobb was studying. It was a Currier & Ives, of course. And Mrs. Groestli nodded without speaking, knowing deep down in her heart that it was a cheap copy. These two married children didn’t know anything. It was no wonder the world was in such a mess.
When Mrs. Davis offered her a second glass of wine, Mrs. Groestli declined, saying that she couldn’t take any more time.
But the instant she said this, she regretted it, for it sounded as if she were through looking, whereas she had only started. Mr. Cobb knew her ways, and would not be surprised if she gave evidence that she was about to prowl in earnest.
“For an investor in real estate,” she explained, “there’s no more precious time than that spent in looking over a potential investment.”
The Davises stared at her respectfully, but said nothing. They gave the impression already of being trespassers in Mrs. Groestli’s house, and the thought of this made her suddenly indulgent. She laughed and leaned over to touch the hardwood floor, checking it for varnish. No doubt her bottom looked like a big pink
valentine in her slack suit, but she was above caring for such delicacies. She hadn’t become the owner of so many properties by being intimidated by the fear of making impressions.
“Good flooring,” Mr. Cobb said, sipping his second glass of wine.
Mrs. Groestli glared at him, but he was poking his finger in his wine glass, staring cross-eyed as he tried to pick something out of it. Smoke from Mr. Davis’s pipe floated like poison gas in a horror movie above her head.
“I’m nothing if not thorough,” she said cheerily, walking toward the stairway.
“Mrs. Gressly likes to check in every nook and corner when she invests in a property,” Mr. Cobb said, putting his glass down on the coffee table.
“She’s certainly welcome to take her time,” Mr. Davis said. “We have to pick up our two daughters in a little while, but she’s certainly welcome to stay here and make herself at home.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Mrs. Groestli said comfortably, and Mr. Cobb said, “I’m sure she’d appreciate that very much.”
“We really wouldn't mind a bit,” Mrs. Davis said, pulling up a long strand of hair and tucking it behind her ear. “Just go anywhere you want and make yourself at home.”
“I have to be leaving, myself,” Mr. Cobb said, shaking his sport coat down around his shoulders. It was a slick sport coat with broad lapels and a salmon stripe in it, reminding Mrs. Groestli of a band leader back in the days of Kay Kaiser.
“Listen,” Mrs. Davis said earnestly to Mrs. Groestli, “we don't really mind a bit if you want to stay and look around. Honestly!”
“Honestly?” Mrs. Groestli asked.
“Really,” Mrs. Davis said, and Mrs. Groestli said, “Well, all right, then, if you don’t mind,” and marched upstairs, thinking that they were probably hoping that if she stayed around she would find something wrong and not buy the house after all.
By the time she returned to the bathroom, she knew that Mr. Cobb had left. The Davises were still downstairs, however. She could still smell the fresh burning of pipe tobacco, and occasionally she could hear one of them speaking or moving about.
The pleasures of plodding here and there, looking in closets, standing still and measuring the window angles, visualizing new carpeting, if she ever decided to appeal to a different quality renter … all of these rituals filled her with a deep satisfaction.
But there was something else: this house was Clyde Brickie’s property, and Mrs. Groestli savoured the fact with complex emotions. She was taking something back from him forty years after he took her most secret possession. Not that Clyde would ever catch on; but after all, that was secondary. What she was after was nothing as crude as simple revenge; it had more to do with symmetry, in her way of thinking. Not only that, the house was underpriced.
She stood in the bathroom and gazed at her image in the mirror. It was not difficult for her to see that shy, intense sixteen-year-old girl she’d once been, thrilled to the limits of ecstasy by being asked to the homecoming game by Clyde Brickie, whose father owned a gray Packard with red leather seats.
The sound of the faucet being turned on downstairs brought her mind back to the business at hand, and Mrs. Groestli once more studied the condition of the bathroom. Having long before decided she would buy the house, even if she had to pay the asking price (which was not a good tactic, even when the price was too low), she was now simply intent upon gathering a list of all defects for the sake of bargaining leverage.
On her previous trip to the bathroom, she had tried the faucets, and had found them a little slow, indicating corrosion in the pipes. Now she raised her face and stared at the ceiling above the toilet bowl. A small section was clearly outlined, which she assumed to be a trap door to the crawl space attic overhead.
Mrs. Groestli looked around and decided upon the laundry hamper, which looked strong enough to stand on. She lifted it up and placed it squarely on the lid of the toilet seat, which had been demurely closed (for her visit, she was certain) when she’d first come into the bathroom.
Carefully, she stepped up on the toilet seat and then, knee first, gathered her full weight upon the hamper, then, shakily, she stood. If they could see her now, they’d realize that the old bird had plenty of juice in her yet, and wasn’t the sort you could fool around with. She was a little bit sorry that Mr. Cobb wasn’t there to witness her acrobatics.
She pushed the panel up, and lifted her head so that she could see into the twilight area of the attic. Vents were placed at each end of the gables, giving plenty of light to see by, if you didn’t have to read fine print.
What happened next could never have been predicted by anyone, not even Mrs. Groestli herself. Later, she was to think of it as one of those moments of utter, unexpected madness that she supposed everybody experiences once or twice in a lifetime. But she’d never dreamed that she, too, was vulnerable.
Because it occurred to her that she was high enough that, in spite of her weight, she could hunch herself up through the opening and be able to walk around in the attic and look at all the rafters, not to mention the underside of the sheeting. She could also check the insulation more closely, because Mr. Cobb had been vague about it. She didn’t like her house losing heat, even if she herself wasn’t responsible for the gas bills. This seemed a rather magnanimous attitude, when she thought about it, and it was. But it was also prudent.
That was all it took: the simple idea, and the next thing Mrs. Groestli knew, she was elbow high in the attic, her feet kicking like those of a strong swimmer, which she’d once been; and then, with a mighty shrug and lurch, she eased breasts forward and managed to twist and pull her hips up onto the nearest beam, where she rested briefly, panting and feeling her heart going lickety-split for a minute or two. And then she stood up, and stepped over the beams, until she came to the front vent, where she could peer out through the jalousy openings, down into the street, where she looked just in time to see Mrs. Davis get in their car and close the door.
Now I’m all alone, she thought, nodding.
It also occurred to her that she’d gotten her pretty clean pink suit filthy by doing a crazy thing like this, but she didn’t care. Maybe it was the rose; she wasn’t used to drinking anything at all, and maybe it had been just enough to propel her up through that opening.
Whatever it was, Mrs. Groestli had no regrets. But since she practically never had regrets anyway, it would have been difficult to detect anything like triumph or transcendence in her present acceptance of having done such a thoroughly crazy thing.
Whatever the attic was, it was awfully hot, and Mrs. Groestli found herself perspiring. The house wasn’t all that well insulated, just as she’d half suspected; and if she hadn’t climbed up here, she couldn’t have learned this.
She stopped and took her bearings. Certainly Clyde Brickie didn’t do anything this crazy or thorough when he checked a property out before buying! Feet balanced on separate beams, her body hunched slightly forward, as if to charge into the rafters before her, Mrs. Groestli thought about this, and was proud of herself.
In spite of the heat, she relished her privacy as she made her way over the beams, from one end of the attic to the other. The rafters were sound, and the sheeting was clean, dry, and tight.
No sir, there was nothing at all wrong with this house! Not a thing. It would be a real bargain. Clyde Brickie was crazy for letting it go so cheaply.
She couldn’t have identified the precise moment when a slight uneasiness began to sift into her mind. At first, it was so unfocused that she couldn’t have named what it was, precisely, even if her life had depended on it.
Then it came clear. She was alone in someone else’s house, up in the attic, which couldn’t be gotten to except through a trap in the bathroom ceiling, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to get back down.
At the precise moment when she realized this, something else came to her. It was like piling on, she thought. And no fair! She remembered being a little girl and thinking such things, a
lways, when boys came to disrupt peaceful and sensible games.
This second trouble had to do with her arms. Both of them ached and started to tremble. She had made too great a demand upon them. It was no wonder; it was a miracle she had been able to hunch herself up through that hole into the attic, considering that she was soft and overweight and … well, yes, a woman. Women didn’t have strength to do things like that, and yet she’d done it. But the cost had been too great. She’d strained herself, and her arms trembled like loose guitar strings being slapped by a thoughtless hand. And her stomach felt funny, like it had been turned over and then turned upright too quickly, so that everything inside was unsettled.
Oh, what a fool she’d been! What an utterly, stupidly, foolish thing to do! Why, it was the sort of thing middle-aged men did, forgetting that they were no longer young, and then having to be nursed back to good sense and health by their patient wives, who understood the folly of such deviations. She knew this very well, for her own father had been the type, overdoing everything until he’d died of a coronary at the age of fifty-one.
The thought of her father and her mother’s long widowhood gave Mrs. Groestli uncomfortable thoughts. A hot attic is not the place for such contemplations, especially for a sensible property owner who knew more about houses than two Clyde Brickies and ten Mr. Cobbs.
Seriously and slowly, she edged back to the opening in the ceiling and peered down at the clothes hamper perched on the toilet bowl. The sight made her dizzy. It looked as small and fragile as a shoe box. Lowering herself onto that tiny and unstable surface was horrible to contemplate, especially when her arms were feeling weaker with each and every breath she took. And they were trembling so hard she could not have managed to put a key into a lock.
Not the sort to spend her strength on useless regrets, however, Mrs. Groestli forced herself to sit in the opening and breathe deeply. She looked at her legs dangling down toward the clothes hamper and felt despair for a moment, until she pushed it back. Seeing the smears of dirt on her pink pants suit did not move her. Dirt was the least of her problems, now. Her problem now was to lower herself through the opening into the bathroom by some method, without breaking her neck. Otherwise … otherwise, she would have to wait there for the Davises to return and help her down, which was a thought worse than death by rat bite.
The weight of her feet hanging through the opening seemed enormous. If she’d tried to ease herself down, holding her weight by her arms, she knew she would have plummeted to certain disaster. How had she ever dreamed of doing such a thing? How had she ever managed to scramble up through this hole? And why?
Then it was that Mrs. Groestli made two decisions, one after the other. The first was that she would not buy this house after all. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care why. She was accountable to no one, and the simple fact was, she told herself, she wouldn’t have accepted Clyde Brickie’s house if they’d handed it to her on a platter. No wonder he wanted to get rid of it.
The second decision she made was actually more of a vow than a decision. And that was that if she ever again did anything as silly as climbing up through some hole in a ceiling of another person’s house, she hoped she would die.
The longer she sat there, the more nervous she got. Even though she knew exactly what was happening to her, she sat there staring down at the hamper with a sort of grim satisfaction in all the horror it radiated upwards into her mind.
As often happens in moments of crisis, Mrs. Groestli lost her sense of time passing, so that she was surprised to hear very faintly, as if from a great distance, the soft plock, plock of car doors being closed.
No doubt this was Mr. and Mrs. Davis returning with the conviction that Mrs. Groestli had long since departed from their house. What would she say to them, even if she got down safely in time, and they found her still upstairs, nosing around? How long had she been there, anyway? It seemed like hours, but she was aware that in misfortune a minute can seem like ten.
And yet, if they had gone and picked up their daughters, some considerable time must have elapsed. Had they chatted with the parents of their daughters’ friends? Or their sitter? Had they stopped at the supermarket to buy pork sausage or Tropicana orange juice on their way home?
The thought of the Davises standing at the front door, getting ready to turn the knob and enter the house, filled Mrs. Groestli with an anxiety that was almost numbing. What if she got halfway through the hole and got stuck there, and the Davises came upstairs and glanced in the bathroom to see Mrs. Groestli’s pink legs and bottom swinging tensely from the ceiling, her feet probing for the clothes hamper? Could anybody really ever survive such an ordeal as that?
Evidently, the answer was negative, for Mrs. Groestli eased her hips off the edge she had been sitting on, and felt her arms pulled upwards with such violence that she was certain the ligaments of her shoulders would be torn. And even as she did this, poking her feet swiftly at the top of the laundry hamper, she realized that this was the second time that very day she had acted with precipitous folly.
Probably, she thought just before her numb feet kicked the hamper off the toilet seat, Clyde Brickie had never once in his life done anything as foolish and impetuous as this, not even when he took the virginity of an adoring sixteen-year-old girl who evidently thought the sun rose and set upon Clyde Brickie.
The doors closing had not been those of the Davises, but those of their next-door neighbors, who drove a Pontiac. Their name was Prager, as Mrs. Groestli recalled.
The Davises did not return for another half hour, and when they did, their eldest daughter, Tammy, who had to go to the toilet, raced upstairs and found Mrs. Groestli lying over the broken clothes hamper.
Probably most girls her age would have screamed, but Tammy didn’t. Instead, she went downstairs and told her mother what she’d seen. She spoke in a whisper, as if there were something a little shameful in coming upon such a sight.
Mrs. Davis called out to her husband, and the two of them rushed upstairs, with the girls close behind, and tended to Mrs. Groestli, who— in spite of considerable pain—was perfectly lucid. She told them she had had a dizzy spell of some kind and fallen over the hamper. She said she was afraid she’d crushed her ribcage and broken her ankle, but she insisted that the emergency squad should not be called.
“How did she fall across the hamper when the hamper was over there?” Tammy cried, pointing; but her mother shushed her.
They helped Mrs. Groestli to her feet, after which she told them two more things: she would pay for the hamper’s replacement and she had definitely decided against buying the house.
The Davises showed neither disappointment nor relief. They were of course intent upon taking care of Mrs. Groestli. At Mr. Davis’s suggestion, and at Mrs. Groestli’s direction (she knew a shortcut), the poor woman was taken to the emergency room at the local hospital.
There, her physician was notified, and x-rays were taken, showing that Mrs. Groestli had two hairline fractures in her ribs. She’d also managed to sprain her ankle, which was not quite swollen. “It must have been quite a fall,” the resident physician said to Mr. Davis, thinking he was a relative, and Mrs. Groestli answered, “It was.”
Of course, Clyde Brickie never heard of the episode, nor was there any reason he should. Mrs. Groestli was content with that fact, for she was a realist from the word go, as she often told people. And this claim had some validity, for in her private thoughts she never tried to excuse her conduct that day. “I must have been out of my mind,” she told herself. But later, she modified this to, “I must have had some kind of spell.”
As for the Davises, they never did find out exactly what had happened. It is surprising that people very seldom look up, and it was almost four months to the day when Mrs. Davis was sitting on the toilet and looked up and called out to her husband that the panel to the attic was open. And the two of them talked about it for a while, until Mr. Davis took the new clothes hamper and put it up on the closed toi
let bowl and stood up on it (his wife, saying, “Now you be careful!”) and closed the hatch.
From the story collection Crazy Women (1985)
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