— An Even Better Love —
It was not unusual for gentlemen of retirement age to come into the New Elm library and, after browsing in the general-science or biography sections, to appear before her desk and, books in hand, sheepishly ask Margarita, “Would you care to accompany me to a movie?” Though she was often flattered, she had gotten into the habit of saying, “No, thank you.” That she lived alone did not bother her. She sometimes missed her sisters’ companionship, but she had come to covet the silvery light and quietness of her days as preparation for the new life to come.
But one afternoon at the age of ninety she was surprised to look up from her desk and see a tall, white-haired, blue-eyed gentleman, a rugged-looking fellow in work shirt and blue jeans, with eyes so clear and so intelligent that for a moment she felt smitten, as the magazines of her youth would call the feeling. He was a younger man, about eighty-five, with such a serenity about him that she thought he might be a retired minister. In his eyes she saw an intimation of powerful experiences—of a life long and well lived.
Blushing, she asked him, “Is there something I can get for you?” and the man said, in a deep voice, “I’m looking for a book on aviation, for my great-grandson, a boy of about eight. And a book on archaeology for myself.”
“Aviation and archaeology?”
“The book on archaeology is for me; lately it’s become an interest of mine.”
“Well, let’s see.”
She got up from her desk, her hair in a bun, on her mouth a light peach-colored lipstick, a little rouge on her cheeks. In a black dress, pencil in hand, she led the gentleman into the general-interest section, finding, as he wanted, an oversized book on the history of aviation and another entitled Famous Excavations. As she pulled them from the shelf, she was aware that this man, like her brother, towered over her, and her heart fluttered, for she felt, or remembered, what women of her age thought of as a very distant urge.
“Now, sir, do you have a card here?”
“No, ma’am. I, uh, just took a house over on Hartford Road.”
“With your family?”
“Well, no, I’m alone, but one of my kids lives here. He runs a little air-shuttle business over at the New Elm airfield.”
“He’s a pilot?”
“Yes, ma’am. I taught him myself.”
“How interesting.”
“It was.” Then he added, “I flew planes for the Air Force for twenty years and then worked as a pilot for Pan Am for another twenty. I flew all around the world.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
“I suppose I am.”
And he smiled with such pearly teeth (false? his own? she could not tell) that she blushed again.
“Anyway, my name is Leslie Howard.”
“Like the actor?”
“Yes, I’ve had to live with that coincidence most of my adult life.”
And then, books in hand, and just as a group of school-children came in through the door—she was to read to them that afternoon from a book that explained how, in prehistoric times, flowers had gotten their colors—he shyly lumbered out.
***
She did not see him again for two weeks, but every morning the possibility that Mr. Howard would come by the library had inspired Margarita to spend more than her usual time at her vanity table. She’d wear her string of Majorcan pearls and her big, pretty loop earrings, and she’d walk back and forth before a mirror to make sure that her dress hung properly on her body. Each time the library door opened, she would feel a rush of expectation, then disappointment. But he walked in one day to return the books, and they fell to talking. Widowed for eight years, of late he had been feeling a little more lonesome than usual.
“I was lying in bed, trying to figure it all out, ma’am. Then I realized that I was thinking about you. I wanted to go to the movies one night, and after sitting through the thing—it was a film called Indecent Exposure, a detective story—I asked myself why was I at that movie by myself when I could have gone with you. So, now, I figured there’s another movie playing in the triplex that I want to see, and I was wondering if you would be at all interested in joining me for the seven-forty-five show. Maybe we could have some dinner before. I don’t know—whatever’s okay with you.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll say yes.”
***
Mr. Howard was not a bookish man, though his imagination was solidly ambitious. At his age, he was interested in seeing some of the wonders of the world, like the pyramids of Egypt. He liked books with solid facts, books about car engines, or carpentry, which he would take out. And yet he regarded Margarita’s packed bookshelves with respect. “Maybe in another life,” he would say, “I’ll get the chance to read all this kind of stuff.” He was healthy, strapping, and did not have the air of impending death that hovered over so many of the elderly gentlemen she would encounter in the library and at the senior citizens’ club. Nor did he seem the kind of introspective fellow who would obsessively contemplate his mortality. He’d flown bombers over the Pacific during the Second World War, and ever gentle with Margarita, he would hold doors open for her and never walked too quickly for her steady but slower pace as they’d stroll through town. He impressed her with his strength, his can-do attitude about things. He’d come to the house if she needed something repaired—a loose cabinet door, a light fixture in the hall—and when the flowers started to bloom and Margarita would get out sun hat and gardening tools, he would help her dig a flower bed. He’d drive over to the Agway and buy her more seeds than she would need, and bird food for her feeders—for he was aware that the presence of robins and blue jays and flitting sparrows brought her joy. And though he never had that much to say, he was a good listener. That Margarita had a Cuban mother interested him. For six years, on and off, he had piloted Pan Am flights out of New York to Havana and had spent many a layover in that city. And he pleased her by saying, in his slightly twangy voice—he was born in Georgia and to that day owned two soybean farms—“I kind of liked the Cubans.”
They’d been seeing each other for five months—but only Lupe knew about it—when after lunch on the sun porch one summer day in 1992, he took her by the hands and said, “I think, Margarita, that you have the kindest eyes I have ever seen.”
“That’s what I thought when I saw you.” And she looked down at her hands. “But what do we do?”
“I don’t know, sometimes I just think that, well, maybe—” And then he leaned forward and gave her a long, deep kiss, and though she had begun to tremble, she said to him, “Come along, my love, and let’s go to bed.”
She had not seen a naked man for many years and she had never seen such masculinity in any man in her entire life. Like the rest of his body, his sex was quite long and solid—and though it took her a long time to arouse him, for he was old and her sagging body had seen better days, she found herself feeling the ancient pride of a woman satisfying her man. With kisses and caresses and the wisdom of her years, Margarita commenced to bring about in her lover a vitality that would have put many another man, regardless of age or romantic impulse, to shame.
***
And then on another day he asked her to marry him, and she said yes. That same day, he’d driven her over to the New Elm airport, where he and his son, Russell, were planning to take up their airplane, a Beechcraft Bonanza. Margarita’s sole experience in a small craft went back some seventy years (with that handsome aviator from another age), but she said yes to their invitation.
They were high up in a cloudless sky, Mr. Howard at the controls, the plane soaring over the crisscross terrain, lilting toward the sun, then serenely drifting, the patches of farm and the highways and railroad tracks and rivers flowing down below, the tilting edge of the world in the distance—Margarita breathless. They had been flying for about a half hour, Mr. Howard’s son in a rear cockpit seat, when his father, looking out over the horizon, asked Margarita, “Are you okay?” And even though her stomach had filled with wax and fea
thers, she had nodded, swallowing, the same way she had many years before, when she had gone flying with the handsome man from heaven. And then the low-key Mr. Howard surprised her once again. “Do you want to try flying this bird?”
“Not on your life.”
“Oh, come on, it’s easy.”
And relinquishing the controls, he said, “Now, to keep the craft level, you just hold the control steady. To bring the plane down, you press the controls down ever so slightly, and to bring it level, or to climb, you just tip it back toward yourself ever so slightly, without too much effort. You understand, my dear. It’s a Zenny kind of thing.” She nodded. And just like that, with the simple touch of her hand, Margarita Montez O’Brien, in the ninety-first year of her life, pulled the control toward herself, ever so slightly, and within a few minutes the plane climbed some five hundred feet. Mr. Howard, his hand atop hers, gently pushed, and the plane leveled off. Then for a few minutes the plane drifted through the cloudless, unturbulent sky and Margarita laughed, for late in life she seemed to be experiencing yet another moment of unexpected earthly pleasure.
—Retirement—
Nearly two years later, Mr. Howard was out in the yard of their house in New Elm, tinkering with a car engine, work which left him most content, especially on a nice spring day. And Margarita, following her usual routine, had prepared, with some sadness, to make her way out to the library, for it was going to be her last day as a volunteer. It was 1994 and arthritis had been giving her some trouble of late. It seemed that in a very short time, three or four months after she returned from visiting the pyramids of Egypt with her husband (a fascinating trip, but too hot—at Abu Simbel, where it was 120 degrees, she had fainted from the heat), her age had finally caught up with her. Her joints ached, and while she could still get around—with some difficulty, for she had to use a cane and take medications—and could still, on occasion, enjoy love’s embrace with her husband, the tasks of the day had become, quite simply, so much more of a chore that, with regret, she had tendered her resignation at the library.
She considered herself a positive thinker and gloried in her independence, but certain events had saddened her. Professor Perkins, and Lupe, and Sarah’s husband had died. And there had been news from Irene’s husband that her diabetes was worse, that the poor woman who loved her sweets had taken to a wheelchair. On the other hand, down in Florida, Isabel was still going strong, her days spent mainly in her son’s house in Ft. Lauderdale, punctuated by strolls along the beach and the occasional visit or phone call from her children and grandchildren. Patricia, in her spiritist’s trade, was living out a happy retirement in Lilydale, making occasional consultations with beings from other worlds, and Maria and Olga and Jacqueline, who still held occasional salons, had become more inseparable than ever. They were either in their apartment together or would make careful forays into the museums, concert halls, and restaurants of the city, their apartment, like a museum itself, cluttered with photographs and scores and souvenirs from the days of their youth, those ladies now retired. Retired was what all the sisters were, living off savings and Social Security with humbleness like Gloria and her husband, and Veronica, who’d never remarried and spent her days as a church volunteer, or like Marta and Carmen, now both widowed and living together again in Anaheim. Or gloriously retired like Helen and her husband, with their occasional jaunts to London to catch the West End theater shows, having left the chaos of New York for the good yachty life of Newport, where she passed her days forever taking lessons (in French and Spanish, which she had never really learned) and attending the social season.
Even her beloved brother, Emilio, had retired, selling his business and taking a house with his woman, Diana, and her daughter, Jill, in Santa Monica, where he devoted his days to their life together. (Sometimes he’d be quite amused when one of his old movies turned up on television, pointing out to Jill, “That’s me, in my youth,” his own head filled with memories of Cobbleton and women, Italy and Alaska, Errol Flynn and the trappings of Hollywood, which he had escaped.) And he was happy. Margarita remembered the day, some months after she returned from Egypt, when Emilio had visited her. He and Diana and their daughter were on their way to Italy, and he thought to stop off to see her, because she was very old and he’d noticed a slight fatigue about her whenever they’d speak on the telephone. He’d just come by for a few hours in the morning, as they were to board a six-thirty flight out of Kennedy for Rome, and after lunch, he could not resist posing her in her back yard, finding her elegant and still quite beautiful.
Sometimes what made Margarita sad was the feeling that she would never see Emilio or any of her sisters again. She knew that it would be difficult for them to have another reunion, as they did, quite felicitously, at her marriage to Mr. Howard two years before.
On an autumn day, the wedding was held not in New Elm but back in Cobbleton—for Margarita, in the logic of her years, and thinking about her mother and father, wanted the ceremony to occur near their mortal remains. And besides, she felt a nostalgia for the places of her youth, and her intended had not minded at all.
The day before the wedding, she and Leslie had gone driving around, and their route took them to her family’s former property. As they approached, she had been delighted to find her brother, Emilio, standing by the white picket fence with his friend from California and her daughter. She called out, “Brother!” And they had embraced. It was then that Emilio met his future brother-in-law, the two tall men shaking hands, and Margarita for the first time met the new love of her brother’s life, the woman who’d given him so much happiness.
“We were on our way to the hotel,” Emilio had told her—he’d rented a car in Philadelphia. “I wanted to show Diana the house where we lived.”
“It’s the same for me. I wanted Leslie to see it, too.”
And there she stood, looking out into the yard, the trees more splendid and full than ever, the back of the field stretching into the beautiful distance, for the trees everywhere were turning. And looking around, she told Mr. Howard, “When I was a little girl, there used to be this fellow with a great beard and bent-brimmed hat who would come with his horses and wagon, a nice, religious man, a Mennonite farmer. He used to stop when I played here and say, ‘Isn’t it a nice day? And do you know why?’ he’d ask me. ‘Because it’s the work of the Lord,’ he’d answer.” And she began to feel how life had continued ever vivid around them, God brilliant everywhere, and the many years of her life, their sweetness and their moments of unhappiness, overwhelmed her, and she lost her composure and began to cry, Mr. Howard holding her close, repeating, “Now, now, my dear.”
And she said, “I was just thinking how kindly that man was to me, for he always gave me a piece of sugar or a hard candy, and those simple sweets, melting on my tongue, made me almost unbearably happy.”
“Well, there’ll be more of those sweets,” Mr. Howard had said.
She laughed. “I feel as giddy as a young bride.”
As they were standing there, a woman had opened the door. She was wearing a simple housedress and an apron, and behind her followed three children, a toddler crawling out into the world, and two teenage boys. Walking toward them, Margarita remembered the young couple to whom she had sold the house. And there were introductions, the woman inviting Margarita and her company to walk about in the yard and come into the house for some coffee if they liked. Soon Margarita and Emilio were at the edge of the property, looking over the hills in silence.
“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” her brother had said.
***
Her sisters traveled to Cobbleton from all over. Marta and Carmen and her husband, and Veronica, in from California and Illinois, stayed with the hospitable Irene, the rest of the family commandeering the rooms of the Main Street Hotel and a nearby Holiday Inn (the one just off the big K mart on Route 27, outside of town). The evening before the wedding, the families had congregated in the Main Street Hotel dining room, tables covered with bright
crystal and flowers, the wine and champagne flowing.
It had been so long since they had all been together that their initial reunion left the sisters weeping with affection, each delighted that after so many years they were all still very much alive. Seated at a long table, the fourteen sisters chatted and laughed and had exerted such a strong female influence that the utensils and glassware started to clatter and shake. (It was actually the rumble of an ore-filled many-car train passing through town, but the champagne and her imagination had induced this thought in Margarita.) Maria was seated between Olga and Jacqueline, and Isabel, in from Florida with her son, sat beside them, and then there was Helen and her husband, then Sarah and hers, while opposite sat Patricia and Veronica and the ever-plump Irene with her man. Then the righteous presence of Violeta’s minister husband, and Violeta herself. Toward the end of the table, Marta and Carmen and her husband, and Gloria with Arnold. Margarita sat toward the front, her friend Lupe beside her, her future husband, Mr. Howard, opposite with his son and his wife.
At the end of the table sat Emilio, the man of the Montez O’Brien family, presiding over the toasts. As he stood up to raise a glass of wine, towering over the table in his handsomeness and elegance, he said: “To our bridegroom, Mr. Howard, and his family, and to our precious Margarita. All happiness to them forever.”
The clink of glasses, much applause, and the next day a hail of rice.
***
“I’ll see you later,” she told her husband. “I should be back by five.”
In the library that day, she sat at her desk, tending to the last of her duties. For a teenage girl who had to write a high-school term paper on a great romance of history, she had recommended Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex. (How vivid that Queen, in her velvet beaded gowns, had always seemed to be.) And when two other teenagers had come around looking for books on birth control and abortion, she counseled them in their choices, thinking, My God, how the world has changed! Then a woman of middle age had come by, looking for a bestseller to read, and though not all those books were to her taste, Margarita recommended the latest Tom Clancy novel, which, she said, was “quite popular with our readers.” Later, after three, the children came in, and as they gathered around her, she explained how dinosaurs had once roamed the earth. Then it was very quiet, the light through the window serene.
The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien Page 51