The Marriage of Sticks (30 page)

I always woke earlier than she and made the coffee. But she was punctual, and by nine every morning she joined me in the backyard to read the newspaper and talk about what needed doing that day. We had a garden, there were a few friends, and we reminisced unendingly. Of course I never told her any of my real story.

For my birthday one year she bought me a pocket telephone. On the package was a note she had written that said, “Now you’ll really be a California gal!” When I opened the box and saw what it was, I asked who on earth would ever call me? Zoe said sexily, “You never know!” And I loved her for her optimism and I loved her for the lie. I knew she had given it to me because she was worried. I had been having fainting spells,
swoons
she liked to call them, and they were getting worse. My doctor, an Irishman named Keane, joked that I had the blood pressure of an iguana. Sometimes I pretended I wasn’t feeling well just so I could visit him.

But death winds the clock and one morning Zoe didn’t show up for coffee. She was a robust woman and I don’t think she was ever sick the whole time we lived together. When I went into her room at ten-thirty that morning and saw her lying peacefully on her side in bed, I knew. Her children, neither of whom had even the slightest trace of her goodwill and energy, came to the funeral but left on the first plane out.

STORIES WRITTEN IN THE SNOW

T
HE DOORBELL RANG. THE
old woman looked up quickly from the notebook and frowned. She did not want to be interrupted, especially not now when she was so very close to finishing. What an amazing notion—soon she would be done.

No one ever rang her doorbell anyway, that was a given. Once in a great while someone wearing a brown United Parcel Service uniform brought her a package from Lands’ End or another of the mail-order companies that supplied her with sturdy practical clothes made out of warm materials like Polartec or goose down. She needed all the warmth she could get because her body felt cold almost constantly now, despite the fact that she was living in the desert heat of Los Angeles. Sometimes at night she even wore a pair of electric blue Polartec gloves while watching television. If someone had seen her they would have thought she was crazy, but she was only cold. More than wisdom, irony, grace, or peace, old age had brought cold, and she was never really able to escape it.

Pausing a moment, she remembered she had ordered nothing, so whoever was at her door now could only be mistaken or a nuisance. Would you like to subscribe to this magazine? Would you like to believe in my God? Would you happen to have a dollar for a guy down on his luck?

The bell rang again—so loud and annoying—
ding-dong ding-dong
! There was no way to avoid it. Grimacing, she put down Hugh’s fountain pen and reached for the cane leaning against her desk.

She was fat now. Recently she had even begun calling herself that, although she’d known it for a long time. She was an old woman who had grown much too fat. She liked to sit. After Zoe died she had stopped going to exercise class. She liked cookies. Hugh once said, “Eating is sex for old people.” Now it was true for her.

Her knees were weak. And her hips and God knows what else. It was an effort getting up or sitting down. When you were as old as she was, everything was an effort, and when you weighed twenty-five pounds too much you did a lot more with a groan than ever before. The year she died, Zoe had given Miranda the cane for Christmas. It was a very nice one too—made of oak and slightly crooked, so that it had a kind of jaunty character. It reminded her of something an Irishman would use. Ireland. Hugh always said he was going to take her to Ireland—

The doorbell rang again. Damn! She was sure she was almost finished writing her story, but now this interruption would disturb her train of thought. She didn’t know if she’d be able to get back into it later. Writing demanded her full attention. More and more, her memory played hide-and-seek with her. She felt compelled to get everything down on paper as soon as she could before something inevitable and dreadful like a stroke or Alzheimer’s disease roared into her brain and like a vacuum cleaner sucked it empty.

Leaning hard on the cane with one hand and pushing down on the desk with the other, she raised herself out of the chair. After a few small, unsteady, dangerous steps, she moved slowly across the shadowy room.

The room never got full sunlight. She liked it that way. She kept two lamps burning in there almost all the time. At night when she was exhausted and going to bed she would walk out and leave them on on purpose. She liked thinking her workroom was always lit. As if some kind of bright spirit was in there guarding the important things like the diary and her thoughts. Yes, she felt she left her most important thoughts in that room because it was where she did all of her diary writing. How silly. The silly thoughts of a silly old woman.

That’s what she was thinking as she gradually made her way across the house to the front door. Who could it be? Why did they have to come calling now? What time was it anyway? She stopped walking and looked at her watch. It was an enormous thing, the watch with the largest face in the store—bought so that she could read the time without having to put on her glasses.

“Wow!” It was five in the afternoon. She had been writing for hours. That was good news because it meant she was inspired, anxious to know how she would end her account. That end was so near now. She felt she could reach out and touch it. When she was done, Alzheimer’s or heart attack or whatever horror could take over and she wouldn’t care. Really, she wouldn’t care.

She peeked through the window in the front door but saw no one. If this was a prank by a neighborhood kid—ring the bell and run—she would be annoyed. But better that, because then she could go right back to work. Or maybe she would make one quick detour into the kitchen to see—the bell rang again. How could it? She had just looked and no one was there. A short circuit? Whoever heard of a doorbell short-circuiting?

Maybe someone was trying to trick her into opening the door. These were dangerous times. Terrible things happened to old women living alone. They were such easy prey. Watch the news any night and it was easy to be frightened. She had many locks on her door, but so what? Life had certainly taught
her
harm comes in any door it wants and doesn’t need a key. Yes, she grew quickly worried, but again it was only because she hadn’t finished her diary. Her prayer, if she had been a religious woman, would have been, “Please let me finish. Give me the strength and the time to finish. The rest is yours.”

Uneasily, she peeked again through the window in the door and saw something odd. The first time she had looked only straight ahead. Now she moved from side to side and saw that the steps leading to her front door were covered with cookies.

“Waa—” bewildered she pressed up closer for a better view. Cookies. That’s right. From the sidewalk across the small but perfectly kept front yard to the door were sixteen octagonal paving stones. She had liked those stones the moment she first saw them. They reminded her of an English country cottage or a magical path in a fairy tale. Zoe had liked them too, and when it was necessary to dig up the entire yard years ago to repair the septic tank, both women insisted the workers replace the stones exactly where they’d been.

Now cookies covered each one. Well, not exactly covered. With her bad eyes, she could clearly see five of the stones leading to the house. On each stone were four? Yes, four cookies, big ones, like the kind Mrs. Fields and Dave’s sold in their stores. Miranda loved them. Chocolate chips. With dark or light chocolate chunks, macadamia nuts…it didn’t matter. She loved big chocolate chip cookies and here they were on her
front walk
!

An unfamiliar dalmatian loped onto her lawn in a hurry to get somewhere. But he must have caught their scent because, slamming on his brakes, he started gobbling. Dogs don’t eat when they’re excited, they inhale, and this guy was no exception. He ate so fast, jumping from stone to stone, that Miranda began to giggle. She didn’t know who’d put them there but she doubted they meant the cookies for this fellow.

“Follow the yellow brick cookie. They’re your favorites, right?”

She froze. The voice came from directly behind her. She didn’t know this voice, but it was a man’s and it was definitely right behind her,
near
her.

“Don’t you recognize him? It’s Bob the dalmatian. Hugh and Charlotte’s dog. Say hi to Bob.”

He spoke calmly, his voice quiet but amused. She had to turn around because there was nothing else she could do.

Shumda stood five feet away wearing a gray sweatshirt with “Skidmore” printed across the front, jeans, and elaborate blue running shoes. He had not aged at all from the last time she had seen him, decades ago.

“I had a whole little scene planned out with a follow-the-yellow-brick motif but it didn’t include old Bob. Cause I know you loves dem cookies.”

What could she say? It was all over. The time had come for her to die. Why else would Shumda have come? How many years had it been? How many thousands of days had passed since she last saw this handsome bad man on the porch of the house in Crane’s View, New York?

“What do you want?”

He touched both hands to his chest and put on a wounded expression. “Me? I don’t want anything. I’m here on assignment. I’ve been given orders.”

“You’ve come for me?”

“Voilà.
Es muss sein.
”

“Where…What are you going to do?”

“I’ve come to take you for a ride in my new car. It’s a Dodge! I asked for a Mercedes but they gave me a Dodge.”

She hated his voice. It was a nice one, deep and low, but the tone was mocking and arrogant. He spoke to her as if she were a stupid child who knew nothing.

“You don’t have to address me like that. I’ll do what you say.” It came out hard, steely.

He didn’t like that. His eyes widened and lips tightened. Something between them had shifted and he hadn’t been prepared for that. He’d probably expected her to whine or beg, but that wasn’t her way. His unsure expression changed to a leer and suddenly he was back in charge. “I told you I was coming, Miranda. A long time ago. Don’t you remember that dog you liked that was set on fire?”

“That was
you
?”

“Yes. I thought for sure you’d know that it was I with
that
one. What bigger hint did you need? Don’t you remember that Frances saved me by burning a dog?”

“You killed a dog just to tell me you were coming?”

“It was dramatic but obviously not very effective. Anyway, we have to go now. You won’t need to take anything. We’re not going far.”

The fear came. It rushed up through her like water and she immediately began to tremble. She hated herself for it. Despite the staggering fear, she hated herself for letting this appalling man see her shake. She started a deep breath that stopped halfway down her throat because she was so afraid. Still she managed to say “May I take something with me?”

“You want to
pack
?”

“No, I want to take one thing with me. It’s in the other room.”

He looked at her along tormenting moment, then smirked. “Do I get three guesses? Is it bigger than a breadbox? Go on, but hurry up.”

Somehow she mustered her meager energy and shuffled toward the back of the house. Thank God she had the cane, because her body now felt like stone. It did not want to move; it did not know how to walk anymore. But she moved. She walked slowly and unsteadily down the hall to her workroom.

She went in and for several seconds stared at the desk and on it the open diary. She would never finish. She would never be able to complete it and put it away in a safe place where one day they would find it and know the whole story. Never. All over. Finished.

“All right. It’s okay. Just walk away.” She said it out loud as she walked over to a dresser pushed up against a wall. She slid the top drawer out and reached in for the piece of wood. The silver piece of wood Hugh had given her the last time she saw him. She had since collected other pieces over her long life, but they would have to stay here. She didn’t know what she would do with it wherever she was going but she needed to have it with her. Closing her fingers over it, she left the room.

Shumda was waiting by the front door. When he saw her he opened it. Bending forward at the waist, he gestured with an exaggerated sweep of his arm for her to go first. She shuffled forward, leaning hard on her cane. She was so scared. Her knees ached. Where were they going? She heard him close the door. Gently taking her arm, he helped her down the one step to the front yard. The dog was gone and so were the cookies. A few minutes ago it was all strange and funny—chocolate chip cookies on her footpath—but now funny was gone. Soon everything would be gone.

They walked to the street, where he told her to wait. He strode away and around the corner. She looked at the sky. An airplane had left a thin white contrail across the blue. A car peeled out somewhere, its long screech filling her ears. Then it was silent, and soon some birds began singing.

A shiny green Van drove up and stopped in front of her. Shumda was at the wheel wearing a San Diego Padres baseball cap. He got out, opened the passenger’s door, and helped her in. She had trouble getting into cars but rode in them so rarely now that it made no difference.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I don’t want a surprise. Just tell me. At least give me that.”

“Be quiet, Miranda. Sit back and enjoy the ride. You haven’t been outside in a long time.”

Folding her hands in her lap she looked out the window. When Shumda spoke again she ignored him, wouldn’t even turn to look. As soon as he realized she wouldn’t respond, he chattered on nonstop. Told her what he had been doing all these years, told her what
she
had been doing all these years (“They said to keep tabs on you”), told her everything she didn’t want to hear. She looked out the window and tried with all her might to ignore him. If this was to be her last ride, she didn’t want his voice nattering in her ear. A hamburger stand, a gas station. Why had it come so abruptly? Couldn’t they have given her some warning? A day. If they had given her one more day she could have finished everything and been waiting at the door when he arrived. A yellow convertible driven by a beautiful brunette passed them. Then a Volkswagen that looked as though it had been driven around the world six times. The driver was a man with a shaved head. His hands danced back and forth across the top of the steering wheel. A used book store. One day would have been enough. Today while she was working, her stomach had knotted up several times because she knew in her secret self that she would be finished soon, and then what would she do with her days? Why had Shumda been watching her for years? She was no threat. She had never been a threat. Besides, all
that
had been so long ago. Soon after it was over she’d started forgetting things and despite having written this diary, so many memories of that time were like Greek ruins to her by now.