Broken for You (12 page)

Margaret had noticed that lately her mother was not only making herself heard but had started to materialize, just faintly, at the edges of her vision. It was troubling. "Do you have a driver's license?" she continued.

"Yes," Wanda replied, "It's from out of state, but —"

"Do you have a good driving record?" Margaret asked, and then felt immediately ashamed because it wasn't her question, it was someone else's. "I'm so sorry. What a presumptuous thing to ask. It doesn't matter."

Now Margaret seemed incapable of shutting up, and as she began to sprinkle sugar onto her cereal, she went on in a voice that was unfamiliar to her, a crisply enunciated voice that was both friendly and commanding. "You're a reliable person," she stated, gaining speed, "I know that, I can see that. You don't have to prove a thi
ng. And don't worry about incon
veniencing me, because you won't be. I don't need the car much. It just sits in the garage most days. I might have to use it once in a while—" She looked up at Wanda, who had come to a complete, openmouthed standstill.
I'm being loquacious!
she realized, gleefully. Then she went back to sprinkling sugar on her cereal—the physical action pleased and supported her somehow. "I'll make a call to my insurance agent today and get you on my policy right away. It shouldn't be any trouble at all."

She paused and looked at her Special K. It was blanketed by a thick layer of sugar.

"I don't know what to say, Margaret. It's a very generous offer, but—"

"Well, think about it," Margaret said. "I'd certainly sleep better knowing you weren't riding a bicycle home at that time of night."

"All right. I'll think about it."

"Good!
Tres bien! Au revoir
then!" Margaret waved her napkin gaily at Wanda, and then took an enormous mouthful of cereal. It tasted wonderful, like Christmas.

By the time the kettle whistled, Wanda was out the door, and Margaret had forgotten that her teapot lay in pieces in the bottom of thekitchen garbage bag.
I suppose I could use the Clarice Cliff Orange Capri set circa 1930 from the dining room,
Margaret thought.
Or one of the Minton Majolica teapots. The Monkey with the tail handle, or the Fish-eating Fish. But really, how ridiculous. I've never used any of them, not in fifty years; why start now? Then again, isn't that what they're for?

The phone rang. Without thinking, Margaret picked up.

"Mrs. Hughes, this is Pam, the receptionist at Dr. Leising's office."

Margaret's heart raced, as if she'd been running. "I'm fine," she said breathlessly.

"We've certainly had a hard time getting ahold of you, Mrs. Hughes." Margaret detected a certain amount of strain underpinning Pam's professionally cheery voice. "Dr. Leising would very much like to get you in for another appointment."

"Oh?" Margaret tried to sound blase.

"Yeh-ssssss . . ." Pam lengthened the word in a way that made her sound as though she were talking to a very dim-witted foreigner. "Would eight forty-five tomorrow morning work for you?"

Margaret clenched her teeth and pressed down, hard. Her molars seemed to yield and compress slightly, as if they were made of wet mortar.

"I don't want to schedule an appointment," Margaret said. "Put Dr. Leising on the phone."

"Dr. Leising is with a patient right now, Mrs. Hughes. Can't we just go ahead and—"

"No. I want to talk to him in person."

Margaret was put on hold, and a heavily orchestrated arrangement of "Puff the Magic Dragon" came through the headset. She felt very large and very small at the same time, and she thought suddenly of Alice in Wonderland.
Eat this. Drin
k
this.

Her physician came on the line.
"Good morning, Margaret. My re
ceptionist tells me you want to speak with me before you come in." His voice—overly gentle, overly solicitous—annoyed Margaret tremendously. They were practically the same age, for goodness' sake. He'd been to her house for cocktails, about a hundred years ago.

"We've known each other a long time, Robert. Don't talk to me like a doctor. Talk to me like a friend."

"All right," he began. "As your friend, it would be irresponsible of
me not to insist that you allow yourself to be treated for this tumor in an aggressive manner."

"There are things I need to do. I cannot be incapacitated."

"Margaret—"

"I don't want surgery. I don't want radiation therapy. There has to be some other way."

She heard his cell phone go off—it played that famous galloping snippet from the "William Tell Overture"—and then someone spoke in the background.

"All right, Margaret. I have to go now, and we shouldn't have this conversation on the phone anyway. Let's get you in the office so we can talk about how to proceed."

"That's fine."

"I'll give you back to my receptionist and she'll take care of you, all right?"

Margaret spoke with the receptionist and then hung up.

It's too damn bad, sweetie.
Her mother was materializing on one of the kitchen chairs, wearing a white peignoir, looking very much like the character in that old movie—
what was it?
—about the beautiful dead wife who wouldn't leave the living alone.

It's a pisser. But loo
k
on the bright side: I'll see you soon.

"Are you sure about that, Mother?" Margaret said out loud. "Are you really sure?"

Margaret couldn't tell with certainty, but she had the impression that her mother had produced a deck of cards and was playing a game of solitaire. And cheating.

Margaret opened the cupboard under the sink. She pulled out the garbage container and inspected its insides. There, at the very bottom, were the remains of her tea things. She sat down on the kitchen floor. She began pulling the pieces out, one by one, and laying them down. Without exactly knowing why, she found herself laying the pieces in a circle, with herself at the center.

They stayed that way for a while, each silent, each busy in her own way: Margaret, on the floor, laying out a circle of porcelain; Margaret's mother, at the table, laying out her cards. And then Margaret heard a different voice. It was very faint, but very clear.

See you soon,
the voice said.

Margaret froze. Someone else was materializing at the kitchen table, next to her mother. Someone smaller, more transparent, and wearing a cowboy hat. Margaret stayed on the floor, in the circle of porcelain, waiting, trying to will the pain in her head to go away.

It wouldn't. They wouldn't. She sat there for a long time.

Nine

Living Arrangements, 19
7
2

When Wanda got home that night it was nearly nine o'clock. She went into the kitchen to get something to eat and found a personalized note card—"From the desk of Margaret Isadora Hughes"—on the kitchen table. The note card read:

"Dear Wanda, I have taken care of the insurance matter, and you will be able to use the car beginning on Thursday, if you wish. As I said, it is absolutely no inconvenience for me, so don't give it a second thought if you are hesitant on that account. Also, if you would like a ride into work tomorrow morning, let me know. I have an 8:45 appointment downtown and would be happy to give you a lift. Sincerely, Margaret. P.S. I hope you had a wonderful day of technical rehearsals. M."

Wanda stood at the table and held Margaret's note limply. She read it several more times.

She unloaded her backpack onto the table and went into the pantry. She came back with a jar of peanut butter, a box of toothpicks, and a cup of banana rice pudding. Sitting down, she unscrewed the lid from the peanut butter, peeled the top off the rice pudding, and then, using the end of one of the toothpicks as if it were a very tiny spoon, she began to scoop out minuscule bits of food—first peanut butter, then pudding, then peanut butter, and so on—which she transferred methodically to her tongue.

The house was very still.

She'd be happy to give me a lift,
Wanda thought.
That's nice. I could use one.

From the time she was six years old until she was twenty-two, Wanda lived in a house that originally had one bathroom. A second bathroom was installed by Uncle Artie in the 1970s, when Jacqueline Kennedy Schultz turned seven and began entering beauty pageants. This bathroom, located in the basement, was designed to accommodate Jacqueline's ever-expanding artillery of cosmetics, hair accessories, and costumes. The bathroom was also intended to accommodate Jacqueline herself—who was, to downplay the obvious, a big presence in the Schultz household from her earliest infancy. The additional bathroom did not impact the other members of the Schultz clan; excepting only the most severe personal hygiene emergencies, it remained Jacqueline's private domain, and Wanda, Aunt Maureen, and the eight male Schultzes continued to make do in the single upstairs bathroom.

Sleeping arrangements at the Schultzes' were another matter.

The Schultz home had three bedrooms. Before the arrival of their youngest, Y chromosome-challenged sibling, the seven Schultz boys had occupied two of those three bedrooms in a setup that was fairly amenable to all concerned: The three oldest boys (James, John, and Jacob) shared one room, and the four youngest Schultz males (Jesse, Jordan, Joshua, and Jeremiah) shared the other. However, once Artie Schultz finally made his long-awaited X chromosome contribution, this arrangement underwent a radical change; shortly after Aunt Maureen was fully recovered from Jacqueline's birth (followed soon after by a tubal ligation), she announced to the male members of her tribe that baby Jacqueline would require a bedroom ALL TO HERSELF, and the boys' sleeping arrangement would be accordingly reconfigured so that the seven of them would now be housed together.

Imagine the resentment! Imagine the disbelief! Imagine the boys' confusion as their heretofore sensible, no-frills mother went daft chasing down curtains, pillows, wallpaper, bedclothes, and sheets in every conceivable shade of pink.

In an effort to mitigate the shock of these new circumstances, Aunt Maureen and Uncle Artie purchased four new bunk beds for their male offspring. This provided the seven Schultz boys with one bed too many, but the furniture dealer had given Uncle Artie an exceptionally good deal. "You'll WANT an extra bed," the salesman had said, jovially. "For overnight guests!" Uncle Artie and Aunt Maureen laughed so hysterically that they fell over in the middle of the storeroom.

But even though the bunk beds provided a certain fleeting fascination for James-John-Jacob-Jesse-Jordan-Joshua-and-Jeremiah, it soon wore off. All the boys, especially the eldest ones, grew surly and bitter; quite understandably, they did not thrill to the sight of their baby sister, who, on a nightly basis, blew kisses to the lemminglike masses as she paraded down the hall and retired into her palatial quarters.

One can thus easily understand the male Schultzes' uncharitable reaction to Wanda's arrival a mere two years after Jacqueline was born: She'd been abandoned by her parents? She was like an honest-to-God
orphan
? BIG DEAL! To the Schultz boys, Wanda was just another pain-in-the-ass girl.

As such, when Wanda first arrived, she was naturally installed in Jacqueline's room. This was just fine with the boys; it was
not
fine with Jacqueline. Wanda endured Jacqueline's rancor and the Pepto-Bismol excesses of her room for several months, but finally she couldn't stand it any longer. Wanda began longing to occupy that empty eighth bed in the boys' quarters.

She knew the boys would never acquiesce to this unless she could prove two things:

Wanda set about deleting from her behavior and dress anything that was overtly feminine. She eschewed all things pink. She learned to make a variety of farting noises on her forearms and palms. She mastered on-cue belching. She attempted Apache war cries, rocket ships, El Train collisions, Italian race cars, and atomic blasts with less success—but no one could fault her enthusiasm.

Wanda began studying the social structure of the male Schultz tribe. She learned who was fighting with whom, and why. She noticed that
the boys' squabbles often continued throughout the day, and so—when
the warring factions were confined to their cramped b
unkhouse bed
room for the night----
made a hell of bedtime.

After extended research and considerable thought, Wanda developed an idea which she thought might accomplish her goals. She proposed this idea to Aunt Maureen one night while they were doing the dishes. Wanda was the only child in the Schultz household who routinely volunteered to help with this chore; it was the one activity that guaranteed a lengthy amount of time alone with Aunt Maureen.

Aunt Maureen washed; Wanda dried. The steam from the sink rose in milky, diaphanous sheets. Hands moved in and out of the water. Soapsuds drifted and regrouped themselves in subtly changing permutations. To Wanda, the soapsuds represented rare, biologically complex life-forms that were unique to the Schultz kitchen, visible only to herself and to Aunt Maureen.