The Year of Pleasures (6 page)

“Here’s your sundae,” Delores said, and handed the rapidly melting dessert to Lydia, who ate it with astonishing speed. She handed the empty container to Delores to dispose of. Then, favoring the back of her hand over the napkin to wipe the chocolate off her chin, she told me, “Give me your hand.”

I offered her my right hand, and she shook her head impatiently. “No, the other one.”

I gave her my left, palm up, and she held it in her own hands, firmly but gently. Her skin was dry and papery but warm. She sniffed at my hand as a dog might, tentatively but knowledgeably, and Delores and I exchanged a quick glance. Then she took off her glasses and peered closely into my palm. “Long life. Given to dreaming. Oh, lucky in love, I see. And you . . .” She grew quiet, looking even more closely. She stayed so still I thought for a moment she had fallen asleep. But then she dropped my hand and sat back in her chair. “Price of the house just went up,” she said, and cackled—there was no other word for it. She put her glasses back on carefully. Then she clasped her hands on her lap, and one thumb began rapidly tapping the other. A passerby might have thought,
Parkinson’s.
I saw it for what it was:
I’m waaaaiting.

“Lydia,” Delores said. “You can’t do that!”

Lydia gripped the sides of her wheelchair and turned a fierce gaze onto Delores. Her eyes were beady and dark, her mouth turned dramatically downward. “I can. I’m the owner.”

“It went up to what?” I asked, and Lydia turned slowly to me, spider to the fly. She was sweet-faced now. “Went up to three hundred and sixty. Five.”

“Sold,” I said, though I could hear Delores’s silent objection.

“I meant, three hundred and seventy,” Lydia said, and I said no. And then she seemed to suddenly tire; she sighed and said, “All right. Take it, then. Three hundred and fifty.”

“You mean . . . sixty-five?” I said, and heard Delores inhale sharply. Later, we would have a conversation.

“Three hundred fifty!” Lydia said. “And that’s my last offer!”

I looked over at Delores, who shrugged.

“Deal,” I said, and offered Lydia my hand to seal the agreement. But she waved me away.

“Take me back to my room,” she said. “I want to watch the news.”

After Lydia was settled in front of her television, Delores and I said goodbye and started out of her room. But then, “You,” she said to me. “Come over here.”

I went to stand before her, bracing for another price increase. She looked up at me, her brown eyes watery and searching. “He will come,” she said finally. I felt a cold grip at the back of my neck.

“What do you mean?” I cleared my throat, smiled.

She leaned her head around me. “Don’t block the television. Get out of the way.” She sniffed, pulled a wadded-up tissue from her sleeve, dabbed at her nose, regarded with interest an ad for a sporty car. Then she yelled into the hall, “Thanks for the sundae, Dorothy! Bring me another one when you come with the papers for me to sign. Bring me two!”

“It’s Delores.”

“Oh, what’s the difference? You know who I’m talking to!”

Delores turned wearily toward me. “What do you say we go and get some dinner? And a drink.”

I nodded, then turned to Lydia. “Goodbye,” I said. “I’m glad to have met you. I love your house, and I want you to know I’ll—”

“Enough,” she said.

Delores and I sat in an overly dark booth at the Chuck Wagon Round Up, chosen in part because it was right next door to a moderately priced motel where Delores had suggested I’d be comfortable staying. She pulled a tiny flashlight out of her suitcase-sized purse so that we could read the menu.

“That’s handy,” I said.

“You have no idea how often I use it,” she said. “I’ve got a little bitty fan in here, too, and the
most
adorable tool kit.” We placed identical orders for dinner: barbecue ribs, baked potatoes, salads with peppercorn dressing, and Bacardi cocktails.

“I have to apologize for Lydia,” Delores said. “At the very least, I should have prepared you better. Still learning how to sell houses, I guess.” She pulled off her clip-on earrings and threw them in her purse, then leaned in closer to tell me, “My shoes are off, too. And my girdle’s not far behind.”

“How long have you been in real estate?” I asked her.

“Oh, hell, it’s just a hobby. Like macramé. I got into it a few years ago, after my husband died. I’m not very active, as I’m sure you’ve deduced. Don’t have more than four or five clients at a time. Lydia will be my biggest sale. I got her house because nobody else would work with her.”

“Was she ever married?” I asked.

“Yeah. Guy by the name of Lucifer Beelzebub.”

I laughed, then said, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what did your husband die of?”

“Heart attack. Out mowing the lawn one hot day, and that was that. I’d just gone in to make him some lemonade, and when I came back out, there he was. And do you know, I started laughing at him lying there, facedown? Thought he was goofing around.” She shook her head, remembering. “First thing I thought when I turned him over was,
Damn it, I told him he was getting too old for a push mower!
I was so mad at him! I tried CPR, but it was too late. I was crying and pushing on his chest and yelling at him, saying, ‘You
stop
this! Now come on, come on!’ Oh, it was awful. I ran in the house and called 911 and then ran back out to keep trying until they came—that was the longest wait of my life. Only good thing was that he died instantly—never knew what hit him. How about you?”

“Cancer,” I said, and felt inside a curious puckering, a drawing inward and upward. I was grateful for the waitress coming to the table to deliver our drinks. She was a young and very pretty blond woman, an engagement ring sparkling on her hand. “
Here
you go,” she said. And then, “Hey, Delores. A hundred sixty-eight and a half more hours.”

“Good for you, sweetheart,” Delores said. “Still time to change your mind.”

“Oh, I’m not changing my mind,” the woman said. She walked away toward the kitchen, the lightness of new love in her step.

“You know,” Delores said, “her fiancé put her ring in a Kentucky Fried Chicken biscuit—that’s how he proposed. I thought that was pretty dangerous—she could have swallowed it, for Pete’s sake! But Cindy said he was watching her real carefully. In fact, she said she was worried he was going to break up with her—he kept staring at her in this really odd way.”

I nodded, looking down into my drink. My own proposal had come at the end of a glorious Saturday. John and I had gone out to breakfast, then for a walk along the Charles, then to look in antiques stores out in the western suburbs, then to a funky restaurant in Cambridge for dinner. Just as we were getting ready to leave, John asked quietly, “Do I have anything in my teeth?” He raised his lips, chimplike.

“No, “ I said, giggling. “Do I?” I showed him my own teeth.

“No,” he said. And then his face changed and he rose quickly from his chair. I remember thinking that he’d gotten suddenly ill and was rushing off to the bathroom. But what happened was, he came to kneel beside me.

“What are you
do
ing?” I asked. “John?”

“Shhhhhh!” he said. “I’m about to propose!” And he pulled the black velvet ring box from his pocket.

“Yes,” I said, and he said, “I didn’t ask yet.” And I said he didn’t have to, and then I kissed him and the people sitting around us began to clap and I thought I might die of happiness on the floor of an Ethiopian restaurant.

“You okay?” Delores asked.

I sighed. “Yeah. It’s just . . . I resent the time of John’s dying. If I’d been older, I think I would feel more resigned—I’d hope to just enjoy what was left of my life. And if I’d been younger, I might have remarried and had children—John and I couldn’t. As it is . . .”

“I don’t imagine it’s ever easy,” Delores said. “For me, the hardest thing was not to turn bitter. At first, there’s all this attention, casseroles and pies and cards and phone calls. But then it’s just you, and it starts to sink in, all that you’ve lost. Funny, for the longest time it seemed like I was surprised that it didn’t
all
go away, that Carson didn’t come walking back in the door saying, ‘Well, sweetheart, that was a real good job you did on my funeral, now what’s for dinner?’ But they don’t come back and they don’t come back and it takes a toll. You can get mad. And then you can take it out on the whole world. I’ve seen that happen often enough. But the alternative is . . . well, you can speak the truth and shame the devil. You can tell people you need a little help and then let yourself take what people offer—even though it’s hard to do! It is
hard
to do! And you can let yourself be gentle, which takes a lot of strength. But look, honey, it seems to me that you are very strong—look at what you’re doing!”

“Well, mostly I’m honoring a request my husband made, trying to fulfill a dream we had. That and . . . you know, John used to say, ‘Never underestimate the power of denial.’ I suppose that’s what this is, in a way. Denial.” I finished my drink, shrugged. “If nothing else, I’ll sell the house and move back. You can be my Realtor again.”

“That,” Delores said, “would be a very pleasant change from Miss Lydia Samuels.” She leaned back to make room for the large platter being put before her. “Oh my!” she said. “Doesn’t that look good.”

Outside of my elementary school
Dick and Jane
reader, I didn’t think I’d ever heard anyone say “Oh my!” without being sarcastic. I liked that she said it with such clasped-hands sincerity.

After we finished dinner and were ready to leave, Delores said, “Now, listen. Why do you need a motel room? Why don’t you just come and stay with me?”

I looked at her, considering, then smiled and said no.

“Why not?” she asked. Her voice was loud; she had ordered a second drink.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “But thank you.”

“Well . . . okay,” Delores said. “But you come over to my office first thing in the morning and we’ll get everything settled. Call your movers—I’ll have you in that house in less than two weeks.”

In fact, it was a bit over one week. Lydia agreed to rent her house to me for fifty dollars a day until I owned it. And I was lucky again with timing—the moving company was able to bring my things out four days after I called.

So it was that at ten o’clock on a Friday night, I wrapped a quilt around myself and sat on the top step of my new front porch. A few hours earlier I had watched the moving truck drive away, had watched the taillights grow smaller and smaller until they disappeared. It was as though Boston and John and all the life I’d lived thus far was contained in those glowing red circles. I thought of how the movers might go out and grab some burgers and coffee, how they might then jump up into the cab of the truck, turn on the radio, and start the long and bouncy drive back east. It was all I could do not to run after the truck. It had been one thing to be on a journey that was stimulating and full of promise—and distraction. But now here I was. Now what? Should I really try to open a store?

I thought of the boxes of things I’d kept in Boston and now had downstairs in the basement—the candelabra with birds and twisting branches that I’d found in New Orleans, the glass pens and bottles of sepia-colored inks I’d gotten in Florence, the calligraphy sets once given to John by a grateful patient, beautiful samples of lapis lazuli that I’d meant to have made into a bracelet. I had antique birdcages, lengths of kimono fabric, a small bench with ornate ironwork at the ends, the seat covered in apricot-and-cream wide-striped silk. I had yards and yards of many kinds of fancy ribbons. One box held only dried bittersweet and silver dollars; another box once used for wine now had a bird’s nest in each divided compartment. I had charms and beads, vintage aprons, leopard-skin lamp shades, ornate doorknobs, small stained-glass windows. I had a Hopalong Cassidy child’s dinner plate and matching silverware, old black dial telephones, framed pictures of women from long ago, their hair in Gibson girl upsweeps, a variety of funky kitchen cannisters. John used to ask, early in our marriage, what I was going to do with all the random things I bought. But after he heard “I don’t know, I just like them” so many times, he stopped asking.

I looked up at the sky, gaudy with stars in a way I hadn’t seen for a long time. It looked fake, like a backdrop for a stage play created by exuberant elementary-school students who might still believe stars were small, five-pointed objects that glittered in your hand, that you could take home and keep in a shoe box under your bed. In the first weeks after John’s death, I felt closer to him whenever I looked at the sky. Now I felt no ethereal connection; rather, I felt my aloneness. I pulled the quilt closer around me, breathed in deeply. I could smell dampness in the air. Mid-November was still early for snow, but that morning I’d stood out in the backyard before the movers arrived and watched a few flakes swirl around as though scouting out the territory, then melt on the blackening stalks in the garden.

Delores had finally given me pictures of the garden in bloom. Come spring and summer, my senses would be pleasantly assaulted by roses and lilies and lilacs, by foxglove and peonies, by delphinium and phlox and zinnias and dahlias, and, best of all, by hydrangea in the glowing blue color I loved best. I envisioned a white pitcher in the center of my kitchen table, full of a bountiful mix. It made for a bittersweet rush of pleasure—John would have loved such a garden. He was often the one who would gather bouquets of wildflowers when we took walks through the countryside.