The Last Time I Saw You (8 page)

“Concrete is hard or concrete is soft,” the mother said quickly. Obediently.

“No, but which
is
it?” the daughter said. “Concrete is
hard
or concrete is
soft
?” And again she repeated the question two more times.

“Concrete is soft,” the mother said.

Her daughter sighed. Then she said, “Okay, that’s kind of a trick question. Because concrete is soft when they first pour it, isn’t it? But
then
it gets hard.”

Yes
, Candy thought.
One for the mother. Why don’t you ask her if a
sidewalk
is hard or soft?

“Next question,” the daughter said. “Mother? Mother, pay attention, listen
carefully
.”

Listen carefully?
Candy thought.
The espresso maker is making such loud noises, people keep coming in the door and going out of it, there are conversations going on at every table—how can she concentrate? Take her home, to her own kitchen table. Give her a chance
.

“Okay, next question,” the daughter said. “You keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet, you keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet, you keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet?”

I’m going to scream
, Candy thought.

“I’m so hungry,” the mother said.

“Well, Mother, so am I,” the daughter said. “Okay? Now pay attention. Listen carefully. You keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet?”

If you say something over and over again, it begins to lose its meaning
, Candy thought.
Say anything enough times and it becomes gibberish
. Then she thought,
You could keep money in either a wall or a wallet. You could have a safe
.

The mother said, “You keep money in a…,” and Candy didn’t move a muscle, waiting to hear the woman’s answer, praying that she would get it right, that she would have this small triumph.

“In a wall!” she said, and then, “Oh. No. Did you say…? It’s
wallet
!”

“Right!” the daughter said. “Very good! Now listen to the next question: A
banana
is round, or a
coconut
is round?” She repeated it, repeated it again.

“A banana is round,” the mother said, and the daughter said, “
No
, Ma.
Concentrate
.”

But a banana
is
round!
Candy thought.
Depending on where you look at it
!
A banana slice! What about a banana slice?

“I’m so hungry,” the mother said.

Candy went up to the counter to order a piece of coffee cake for the mother. She would give it to her with a flourish and say, “You can share it with your daughter, if you want.” But she ended up ordering two pieces of coffee cake, and two twenty-dollar gift cards, and asked the counter person to wait for her to leave the store before she delivered it all to the women. She thought,
Everyone’s in the same boat. Pass the coffee cake
.

At around ten-thirty that night, Candy awakens from having fallen asleep. She shivers; the water has grown cold. She thinks about adding more hot water yet again but decides not to. Instead, she climbs out of the tub, dries off, applies a luxuriously thick orange- and ginger-scented lotion, and pads into the bedroom. She sees that Coop has fallen asleep on top of the bedcovers, legal papers in his hand, the light on. She turns out the light and puts the papers on the floor, then lies down beside him. He turns and pulls her close to him, then closer. It is so unfamiliar now, the feel of him pressed up against her. She has been missing this, yearning for it for so long, yet now she finds it claustrophobic. Still, it’s nice. It’s a kind of home. Or like revisiting a home she used to love. Neither of them speak. She remembers reading an essay in the newspaper that a woman hospitalized with a terminal illness had written about her ex-husband. Their divorce ten years earlier had been exceptionally acrimonious, and each had felt vastly relieved to be rid of the other. But when the woman was admitted to the hospital for that final time, her exsent her a lavish bouquet and a letter, the contents of which she did not disclose. But she did say she’d pressed the letter to her heart for some time before saving it in a zippered compartment of her purse, because she didn’t trust keeping it in the hospital nightstand. She said she wanted it for as long as she could have it; and then she wanted her children to have it. She also wrote, “It came to me that the experience of dying didn’t necessarily have to be all bad. That parts of it could be glorious.”

Candy feels tears slide down her face, and she makes no move to wipe them away. They are a miracle of composition, tears, and they provide a vital and intimate service without ever being asked. She moves her left toes, then her right. They are still working.
Miles to go
, she thinks.
Miles to go before I sleep
. She recalls the earnestness of Mr. Little’s face when he tried to show his freshman English class the elegance of the construction of those last two lines of the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

“Why does Frost say the line twice?” he asked the class, and they all sat still before him. “Well, why do you
think
?” he said, his pale blue eyes pleading. Finally a boy raised his hand to answer. It had been Lester Hessenpfeffer, who always knew the answer to everything but liked to give others a chance, so he would wait before he raised his hand. Lester answered the question, saying, “Well, one is specific, and one is general. He’s talking about getting home and going to bed that night, but he’s also talking about dying.”

“Very good,” Mr. Little said, with obvious relief. And Candy remembers thinking,
That’s what I thought! I should have answered; that’s what I thought!
She’d smiled at Lester, and he’d blushed and looked down at his desk. His shoes were weird, she remembers, his shoes and his clothes; but he was cute, that Lester. She wonders if he’s coming to the reunion. She wonders if Buddy and Nance Dunsmore are coming; they’d had to get married; she wonders if they stayed together. She begins remembering more names: Annie Denato, who had such a terrible reputation for being easy; Karen Erickson, who once fainted in home ec class at the sight of raw liver and banged her head and the ambulance had to come and take her to the hospital; Marjorie Dunn, who won a big prize for writing an essay none of them understood—something about a white bird with one black feather and a black bird with one white feather. None of the kids had any idea what it meant but the English teachers were all very pleased. Tommy Metito was on the swim team and looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger and this was before steroids, or at least she thinks it was. Lou Kressel wore an
ascot
; she wonders if he’s out as gay now. She gets more and more excited and then it’s like she runs right into a wall, because she remembers what the doctor told her this morning. Extraordinary that she forgot, but then the world is full of surprises. She would like to see some more of them.

The last thing she thinks of before she falls asleep is a time she was a little girl outside playing on a summer night. She was the first to be called in, and she resented it: the sky was violet and the clouds were pink; the fireflies were just coming out; the taste of sweat at the bend in her elbow was delectable; and the earth had given up its heat to the coolness of evening, making the grass so pleasant to lie in. She complained bitterly to her group of friends about having to go in, and Mary Nix said, “We’ll all have to go in in a few minutes, anyway. You’re just the first.” That made it better. Then, when she got inside, there were clean sheets, and the light on at her bedside, and the covers turned down, and the little statue of the Virgin to whom Candy prayed every night and who Candy believed knew her best. Knew everything, in fact, and just kept quiet about it.

Death is a beginning or death is an end? Death is a beginning or death is an end? Death is a beginning or death is an end?

NINE

O
N
F
RIDAY EVENING
, M
ARY
A
LICE AND
E
INER ARE IN
downtown Clear Springs at Styletique dress shop. Late that afternoon, Mary Alice had shown Einer the choices for what she was going to wear to the reunion dinner and dance tomorrow, and he had shaken his head and said, “Absolutely not.” Half an hour later, they were here. On the way over, Einer had told her that he himself intends to wear a medium-weight gray suit and an electric blue tie to the reunion. Might be nice if she would coordinate with him and wear a pretty blue dress. Men like dresses, he said, and men like blue. He said, “You ask any man, what’s your favorite color, and he won’t hesitate. Blue.”

Well, Mary Alice likes red. She likes a red so deep it’s almost black, and as soon as they walked in the store, she saw a dress in that very color, a kind of satiny number with a crisscross bodice and a full skirt with rhinestone belt buckle, and she likes it very much. When she modeled it for Einer, he only sat still, staring at her, which she took to be a compliment. But apparently not, for he finally said, “Inappropriate. Now try on the blue.” For Einer’s benefit, she tried on the midnight blue dress he liked. It is nothing like what she would normally wear. For one thing, it’s awfully close fitting. Also, it has cap sleeves, a risky thing for a woman her age. And it’s so plain, not a rhinestone or ruffle to be found! But, “Yup, that’s the ticket,” Einer said, nodding. “Didn’t I tell you? Wear that one.”

She wants to follow Einer’s advice and wear what he picked out; she could always wear a dressy little cardigan with it. She understands that telling her what to wear makes him feel important and gives him something to do. But she so loves the red! How to disagree with him tactfully? He’s already crabby; he usually eats at five o’clock and now it’s a little after six. Not that he’ll eat much, but the man likes his routine.

Maureen Jernoff, the owner of the store, comes back to the dressing room area. “Have you decided yet?” She has managed to keep the impatience from her voice, but her arms are crossed a little too tightly beneath her bosom. It’s past closing time. She’s probably hungry, too.

“Well, I’m leaning toward the red,” Mary Alice says, hoping Maureen will enthusiastically endorse her choice. But no such luck. “The blue was much better on you, you ought to get that one,” she says. “Up to you, of course. But hey, listen; are you going to pay cash or charge?”

“I’ll charge it,” Mary Alice says and reluctantly starts to put the red dress back on the rack. But then she says, “You know what, Maureen? I’ll take them both.” To Einer, she says, “The red one I can wear another time.”

“I thought I’d get the chicken pot pie,” Einer says, and Mary Alice guesses he misheard her. Never mind. She’s getting both dresses. And she’s getting the chicken pot pie, too.

At the Tick Tock diner, Mary Alice is amazed at the amount of food Einer puts away. He eats almost half of a very generous serving of chicken pot pie, and he says he could eat more, but he’s leaving room for pie, as he has been advised to do both by the bold print at the top of the menu and by—especially by—their waitress, Desiree. “You leave room for pie, now,” she told him. And then, leaning over so that her considerable cleavage was exposed and the scent of her heavy perfume more apparent, she said, “That way we’ll have more time together. Won’t that be nice?”

“Yes, it will,” Einer said, and glanced quickly over at Mary Alice, who looked pointedly off into the distance. Desiree is a sexily overweight black-haired woman in her late forties who wears wildly colored tights—hot pink or turquoise or fire engine yellow or multistriped or paisley print—with her uniform. She has very pretty and very clear porcelain skin, and she wears deep red lipstick. She
looks
like a Desiree. Mary Alice has a sneaking suspicion the woman has given herself that name, and why not? If Mary Alice were to pick a name for herself, it sure wouldn’t be Mary Alice. It would be… what? Maybe initials. Initials beg a question, they’re inherently mysterious, and she thinks they suggest a certain authority, too. K.C., she might be. She imagines herself at the reunion, someone saying, “Hey, aren’t you Mary Alice Mayhew?” and her responding, “It’s K.C. now.” She wonders how many people go to reunions just to try on another way of being, confident that they’ll be able to sustain the ruse for that short amount of time.

Desiree knows both Mary Alice and Einer well, but she pays attention only to the old man. Mary Alice doesn’t mind. It’s nice to see him engaged in conversation with a woman who is not checking on his bowel status or asking if he would like his pills mixed with applesauce, and it gives Mary Alice time to think her own thoughts.

She hadn’t really believed Einer would go with her to the reunion. She thought he’d forget about it, or lose interest, or that some medical ailment
—minor!
she’d imagined,
minor!—
would develop and he would be unable to go. But no. Rita’s man friend had asked her out for this Saturday and so Mary Alice is going to honor her promise and stay with Einer—it just won’t be in his house. And Einer’s thrilled. He’s begun to act like it’s
his
reunion, talking about people he remembers from his own senior class. Peggy McClure, who used to slip him brazen love notes in the hallway. Cecil McIntyre, who bore a strong resemblance to the actor Johnny Weissmuller and whose nickname, in fact, was Tarzan. How he went down in a plane crash in World War II a week before he was supposed to go home. Priscilla Embert, in the class behind him, who went to New York City and became a Rockette. Ned Connady, who started out his bitter enemy and ended up his best friend—they’d had a double wedding. Oh, he’d had some times in high school, he said, and he’s begun to tell her more and more stories, and to become more and more animated while doing so. Frankly, Mary Alice is beginning to resent it. She wants to think her own thoughts about her high school experiences, imperfect though they might have been. In fact, once one gets older, there’s a kind of pride in having survived a bad high school experience; it certainly makes for more interesting conversation when a group of people are comparing notes. What would be the follow-up question, after all, to “I didn’t have
any
problems in high school!”? Though she wonders now if anyone ever would say that, if even the most popular kids weren’t full of doubt and self-loathing, if they weren’t victimized by the same take-no-hostage hormones that plagued everyone else.

Mary Alice also wants to think about how she’d like to approach the man she’s going to the reunion to see. Even if nothing happens, it will be interesting to see him. How he has turned out. If his personality is still kind of the same. If he has a huge beer belly or is still fit and trim.

When Einer pays the check (which he insisted on doing—and after Mary Alice saw the size tip he left Desiree, she understood why), he says, “You’d better get me home; I’ve got to get my beauty sleep. Now, tomorrow’s just registration and then the dinner at seven, right?”

“That’s right,” Mary Alice says.

“I don’t suppose I’d need to go to the registration.”

“No. Considering the fact that you’re not registered.”

He looks sharply at her. “Well, I know that. I guess I know that. Take me out in the backyard and shoot me if I don’t know that! But what I was thinking is, do you
need
me to come?”

Mary Alice is suddenly and unexpectedly touched, both by Einer’s interest in protecting her and by his excitement at getting out, to go to the reunion with her. She knows this magnanimous feeling probably has to do with the fact that she’s about to drop him off at his house and back into the care of his homemaker. Still. “I’ll be fine, Einer,” she says. “If anyone messes with me, I’ll tell you, and then at the dinner you can clean their clock for me.”

“I’ll rabbit punch them,” Einer says. “That’ll take any man down.”

“What if a woman offends me?”

“Well, I’ll rabbit punch her, too. You all want equality, by golly, I’ll give it to you.” He straightens himself in the booth. “What are we having for dinner, anyway?”

“Surf and turf.”

Einer is quiet.

“Do you like that?” Mary Alice says. “I thought it might be good to get two things. You know, more choice, since we have to share.”

“Well, to be honest, I’d have preferred the chicken, there must have been a chicken dish. Seems like people always have chicken.”

“I’ll see if I can change it,” Mary Alice says. She likes chicken, too. She just hopes there’s no garlic in it.

After Mary Alice gets home, she plays back the two messages on her answering machine. The first one is from Pam Pottsman, saying that there’s a problem with dinner on Saturday night. There aren’t going to be enough surf and turfs, the hotel just called; somebody screwed up on the ordering. Would Mary Alice mind very much having the chicken instead? Pam herself was going to have to change her order; there just wasn’t enough surf and turf, but oh well. She would assume it was okay with Mary Alice unless she heard otherwise, and she can’t
wait
to see her tomorrow night, she is so
excited
, isn’t Mary Alice?

Perfect
, Mary Alice thinks. And perhaps a sign, too, of how well things are going to go generally? Maybe all she’ll have to do is sit back and good things will happen of their own accord.

The second message is from Marion, asking her if she’d like to go with him to the Olde Warsaw Buffet next Saturday night. Of course she would. Unless there’s someone new in her life by then. Who knows, there could be. There really
could
be! She had done a little research. She knows what he does, where he lives. No reason they couldn’t have a relationship with some miles between them. Why not take a little road trip to visit a special friend? Who might become more than that? Though even just a friendship would be fine; Mary Alice needs more friends, as Einer is always quick to point out.

She goes upstairs and into her closet and finds her senior yearbook. She turns to the page he’s on and looks into his eyes, assesses for the billionth time his open smile. A man at peace with the world, and in love with it, and she’ll bet anything he’s still like that. As is she. “Hey,” she says softly to the picture. “It’s Mary Alice Mayhew. Remember me?”

That’s what she’ll really say, and now she runs through possible responses. A blank—though kind—look, mixed with a mild curiosity. Or a blank look followed by sudden recognition and a friendly hug.
Immediate
recognition followed by a warm hug, and him saying, “Well, of course I remember you!” Finally, her favorite: grateful recognition, followed by a lingering hug and him saying low in her ear, “Gosh, I’m so glad you came! I was hoping you’d come!” Then he’d step back a bit from her and look into her eyes and say, “The last time I saw you, you were walking out of the gymnasium on graduation day. Where’d you go, anyway? Why didn’t you come to the party?” This last, she knows, is a bit unlikely, but she plays it out in her mind anyway. She feels pretty certain that, when they talk, he will ask her what she’s up to now, and she will answer by saying she has just moved back to Clear Springs. She won’t reveal that she knows where he lives. She’ll just say, “How about you?” And he’ll tell her where he lives and she’ll say, “Really. Well, that’s not so far. We ought to get together sometime.” She knows about his wife, and that he’s single, now.

Before she goes to bed, Mary Alice tries on both dresses again. Here at home, in different light, she decides that Einer is right—the blue brings out her eyes and doesn’t fight so much with her glasses. It isn’t so much plain as elegant. She turns to the side, then grabs a hand mirror to inspect the rear view. Yes. The blue. She leaves the dress hanging in the bathroom, as though to discourage herself from changing her mind, and then lays out on a chair in her bedroom the outfit she’ll wear to register in: black pants, a white blouse, a string of pearls her mother wore on her wedding day. Simple, but pretty. And surprise: red shoes, with four-inch heels. She might not see him there, but she’ll see somebody. And they’ll see her. “Mary
Alice
?” they’ll say.

When she gets into bed, she closes her eyes and for a moment she wonders about the meaning of this sudden… silliness. She is being so silly! But silliness is in everyone; so far as Mary Alice is concerned, it’s a pleasant common denominator. She remembers once meeting a distinguished professor of Asian studies on an airplane; a woman whose eyes held such fierce intelligence. And what did they talk about? Gregory Peck’s unending appeal, and laundry detergent. For some reason, Mary Alice jokingly (if truthfully) told the woman that she herself used a brand of detergent Tim Gunn from
Project Runway
recommended, and the woman asked why, and then asked many more questions and finally pulled out a Mont Blanc to write down “Tide Totalcare. Renewing Rain scent.”

Mostly, Mary Alice thinks, her silliness is Einer’s fault. The way he’s after her all the time to enrich her life. “Get out there!” he says. “Do things while you still can! Blink a couple of times and you’ll be an old fart like me, with memories your only entertainment. You think I’m kidding? I’m not kidding! You’d better
make
some memories before it’s too late!”

As angry as he has made her, picking away at her like this, now she is grateful to him. It isn’t too late for some things. It isn’t! She may have gray hair and a few brown spots and her memory may not be quite as excellent as it once was, but the taste of a good vanilla ice cream cone or the sound of church bells on a Sunday morning or the sight of a red sky still thrills her. And in those moments of appreciation she, like all people, becomes ageless.