Puttering About in a Small Land

  “What else?” He waited and got no answer. “Nothing else. Why don’t you put on a bra when you’re going out? Why do you always leave some part of your clothes missing? Do you like to go out in such a way that you attract attention? Is it some infantile drive toward exhibition or noncomformity, or are you just so habitually careless that you don’t know when you’re dressed or not? Tell me, why didn’t you put on the rest of your clothes? And if you just forget, why does it happen so many times?”

  Liz said, “I couldn’t find a pair of stockings that didn’t have a run; all my bras are on the line or in the wash or something, and I didn’t have time to put on pants.”

  “You better turn the car around and drive back and put them on.”

  “We don’t have time. And what do you care? Why are you always so concerned about things that aren’t any of your business? Can anybody see I don’t have on stockings unless they happen to get up right next to me?”

  “You ought to wear a bra. You shouldn’t go out of the house without a bra. I can see right through your blouse. That’s how I knew you didn’t have a bra on. Look when the sun strikes you; look down. I’ll hold the wheel.” He took hold of the wheel but she did not let go.

  “You told me to hurry up,” Liz said. “I didn’t have time to iron a bra.”

  Turning in his seat, Chic faced Virginia. He had got really angry. “You notice she blames me, but she also defends what she’s done as being perfectly natural. Actually she doesn’t know why she does things. It’s whatever enters her mind.”

  In the back seat the two boys appeared unbothered by the argument. They had begun reading their comic books again, with the same sobriety as before. But to Virginia the argument was offensive; she felt they should settle it and forget it. “It seems simple enough to me,” she said, to both Chic and Liz. “We’re going shopping; she can pick up what she needs.” Otherwise the day was falling into a decline.

  “That’s right,” Chic said. “That’s a good practical suggestion.” His face lost some of its weight of anger; it cleared until he was smiling.

  “I’ll look around,” Liz said. “I’ll see if there’s anything I want.” As she stopped for a red light she said, “What I need more than anything else is shoes. And both the boys need shins. I have a list in my purse.”

  Chic had abandoned the argument. To Virginia he said, “Should we pick up your mother and Gregg first, or go by the store first? You know better than we.”

  “We should pick them up first,” Virginia said. “I think. They may have gone somewhere. She said something about going over to see some woman she knows who’s a real estate broker; she’s debating about getting a license. The woman is urging her to.”

  “That’s a good field,” Chic said. “You have no investment to lose, except your office fixtures. But it’s overcrowded. And it takes time to get the state license.” He was at ease, again. “How about yourself?” he said. “Did you ever consider something like that? A lot of active young women are giving that a try. They can do it during the day.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I have plenty to do. I have my dancing.”

  He pondered. “Of course,” he said, “my own interest runs toward business sites. I could never ferry old ladies around, buttering them up. A lot of being a real estate broker involves being able to tell one whopper after another. Do you agree with me there?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They’re marginal,” Chic said. He frowned earnestly at that.

  “Some of those operators—they collect their commission and get out.”

  She nodded, wondering to herself what he would think of the store. Evidently he had a strong moral idea of how business should be done; she was conscious of his judgment.

  “Are you not interested in the store?” Chic said.

  “I’m interested,” she said. “But I don’t have to be there; it isn’t necessary. He’s doing fine without me.”

  “What’s the kind of dancing that you do?” He asked in such a fashion that she realized what was in his mind; he thought of night clubs or at best such dance teams as the Castles, or possibly Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

  “Have you ever heard of Martha Graham?”

  “I believe so,” he said.

  She described for him the kind of modern interpretive dancing that she taught. She told him about group therapy and participation drama, and the like; he appeared to listen, but she did not feel much real emotional response.

  “Can that be a living?” he said. “By that I mean, can you make it pay?”

  “No,” she said. “Not really.”

  He did not comment on that. But again she was conscious of his judgment. So it can’t be your main purpose in life, he was saying to himself. It’s a sort of hobby, to fill vacant time.

  “I don’t do as much dance therapy as I used to,” she said. It’s so hard to arrange, she thought to herself. So difficult to interest people in.

  12

  On Saturday the store usually had its busiest day. At the counter Roger fell into a somnambulism; he let this Saturday join those in the past and those to come. The phone rang and customers came and left. We are not sick today, he thought. Nobody is sick on Saturday. Nobody is down the street or across the street or sealed up in the bathroom. This is the hub, whether we want to be here or not. He wrote out a tag for a customer. This is where our minds have to be.

  Early in the morning Olsen had left in the service truck and had not been seen again. People on his route had phoned in to ask where he was.

  Where are you? Roger thought. The people were waiting in their houses. Why hasn’t he shown up? the people said.

  “He musta got stuck somewhere,” Pete said, looking cross. “He had that set he was taking all the way over to San Bernardino.”

  “Today?” Roger said. “On Saturday?” He felt dull rage.

  “It’s the only day the guy’s home. Olsen figured on beating it over there before the traffic. He musta got behind a truck coming back. It’s that guy Flannigan we’ve had all the complaints from.”

  “Okay,” Roger said. “Tell me if he phones in.” He returned to the customers at the counter. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I bought this needle here the other day,” the middle-aged woman in the tan dress said. “And it doesn’t fit my phonograph. The man—I think it was the other man there you were talking to—told me it was the one I needed.”

  While he was inspecting the needle, he heard voices at the doorway. Looking up, he saw an astonishing sight. His wife Virginia and his mother-in-law Marion Watson had come into the store, and with them was Gregg, and two freckle-faced red-haired boys, and a dog, and then Chic and Liz Bonner. The four adults conversed amiably; the children immediately spread out into all parts of the store, clutching at the television sets and squeezing in front of customers. The dog, a collie, settled down in the doorway, obviously trained to stop at that point.

  Roger exchanged the needle for the woman, and then he left the counter and went over to his wife. The four of them moved in a gradual course toward the back of the store; Virginia seemed to be showing the Bonners something. For a time none of them noticed him and then Virginia said cheerfully, “Why didn’t you tell me you went over there last night?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, if I’d known you were going I would have gone along.”

  Chic and Liz Bonner greeted him, and he nodded back.

  “What’s up?” he said to Virginia.

  “Liz and I had a date to go shopping down in Pasadena today. I thought we all might as well go along. And then I was talking to them about the store, and Chic suggested we drop by so they could see it.”

  “You’ve got quite a nice little place here, Lindahl,” Chic said. “You own it? By that I mean, you’re the sole owner?”

  “That’s right,” Roger said. When Chic had gone off a few steps, he drew Virginia aside and said to her, “You didn’t tell me a
bout any shopping date.”

  “It was tentative. We just talked about it, on the trip back from the school. Then this morning she telephoned me.”

  “Oh,” Roger said. “She called you.”

  “I think she wanted to have the boys meet you before Sunday,” Virginia said. “So you wouldn’t be a stranger. She’s always driven them up herself.”

  The two Bonner boys had started downstairs to the basement; Chic Bonner called for them to wait. He and Liz followed after the boys. Chic had on his short-sleeved sportshirt, either the same one or another like it, and slacks; Liz looked lovely in a skirt and blouse. They did not seem to be in a hurry.

  “Can you get off for coffee?” Virginia said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Even for a couple of minutes? We could all go next door.”

  “You can see how busy it is,” he said. “You know how Saturday is.” Mrs. Watson had come over beside Virginia. “How could I possibly leave the store on Saturday?” Roger said. “You know darn well I’m stuck here.”

  Virginia and her mother rejoined the Bonners, leaving him alone. He felt a rebirth of the frantic sense of being off somewhere on the edge. Here, in his own store, he felt it. Even here.

  “Phone for you,” Pete said.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody about a set.” Pete put the phone down and went back to showing TV combinations to a young couple.

  “Hello,” Roger said into the phone.

  “I’ve been sitting here waiting for your repairman to bring back my set,” a man’s ponderous voice said. “And he isn’t here yet. How long am I going to have to wait? He was supposed to be here this morning. I have to get downtown; I can’t stay around here.”

  After he had finished hassling with the man on the phone he waited on an elderly lady at the counter who had a paper bag full of tubes to be checked. One by one she brought the tubes out and laid them on the counter; each was wrapped in newspaper.

  Carrying the tubes downstairs he gave them a slipshod check and then brought them back upstairs. “They’re okay,” he said to the elderly lady. “Must be something else. Bring the set in.”

  “Oh it’s too big,” the elderly lady said. “I’d have to get someone to carry it for me.”

  It took a long time to get rid of her. When next he had a breathing space he discovered that Mrs. Watson, Chic and Liz Bonner, Virginia, his son Gregg, the two Bonner boys, and the collie, were all leaving; they had got almost to the doorway. The dog was on its feet, ready to start off. He felt utterly futile.

  “Good-bye,” Virginia said to him. All of them, more or less, said good-bye. Chic Bonner seemed to be expounding on some topic; he peered up at the ceiling of the store, paced off the width of the doorway, and then went out to examine the windows.

  What the hell is he up to? Roger wondered. What now? What else is there?

  After the group had gone, Pete came over to him. “Friends of yours?”

  He said, “Their kids are in the school Gregg’s going to.”

  “The dame isn’t bad-looking. Real sort of—what do you call it?—fresh-looking. You know?”

  He nodded, feeling despondent now.

  “Olsen didn’t phone in, did he?” Pete said.

  “No.”

  “He better show up. He’ll be delivering sets until midnight tonight.” Moving off, Pete reached to take hold of the phone.

  At the counter Roger began sorting the tags. His hands worked reflexively. So she had called, he thought. After she had heard that he had come by. Did it mean anything? If so, what did it mean? What did anything mean? he wondered. And how did a person tell?

  We can never be certain. Not until our dying day. And maybe not even then. All of us, he thought, are down here fumbling around, guessing and calculating. Doing the best we can.

  A noise caused him to glance up.

  Liz Bonner came rushing back through the doorway, into the store. She glided up to the counter and placed herself before him; in an instant there she was, directly in front of him, not a foot away, a dark vivid merry-eyed little shape in a long skirt. His hands continued sorting the tags. He was too startled to put the tags down. He felt as if he were a tin mechanism, under a dome of glass; his arms lifted and fell, his fingers selected the next tag in order and brought the wire up to the hole. But at least he did not watch what he was doing; he kept his eyes on Liz. He felt so lacking in control, so helpless, that he thought, I’m lucky to be able to do that.

  “I forgot my purse,” Liz said. All the colors of her had deepened, become more intense. She’s blushing, he realized. But even her skirt, and her hair, were dark: her eyes had dilated and he saw that they were coffee-colored. They had in them an alert, active expectancy, as if she were prepared for something, for him to do or say something.

  “Oh yeah?” he said, in a faint voice. “In here?”

  She regarded him coolly, still with that color and delight, as if she had wanted to come back, as if it meant a great deal. “I think I left it down in the basement,” she said. “Where all those big TV sets are.”

  “Okay,” he said. He could think of nothing else to say; he had lost his ability to talk.

  Across the counter from him her warm, shiny face reflected equal confusion; the darkness of her eyes shrank and she started to say something, hesitated, and then, without a word, she skipped off in the direction of the stairs, her long skirt trailing out after her.

  What? He thought, what should I do? Before him, on the counter, his hands sorted tags, wired and selected. Just stand here, he said. Let your life run out of your fingertips, until you go blind and your legs curl up and you die.

  In a moment she returned, with her purse. The purse was leather, new, with a strap that she now fixed over her shoulder. She seemed happy, relieved to find it.

  “I’d hate to lose it,” she said. “I’ve got all sorts of junk in it.” At the doorway she paused breathlessly, turning back toward him.

  “Are you leaving?” he said. She nodded. “Good-bye,” he said, then. “I’ll see you,” he said.

  Without answering, she ducked her head and hurried on, out of the store and along the sidewalk.

  After a time he said to himself, I don’t know. How can I know? Am I supposed to read something into that? Make something out of it? Or, he thought, maybe I have got to the point when I see something in everything, because I want to see something.

  The next thing, he thought, is voices. I’ll start hearing voices.

  What can I count on? What can I believe?

  Behind him the intercom to the basement hissed. One of its tubes had a partial short, and the hissing kept up day after day. I am almost hearing things in that, he thought. Why not? What would the difference be, between hearing something in the hiss of the intercom and in what I just now witnessed…that act put on here in the store, in my own store where I know everything and own everything, in front of me.

  Look what I am lost into, he said to himself. I’m hanging on the merest hiss of noise, so low that it’s barely audible. On the threshold of audibility. A hum.

  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  How precarious it is. I have to strain. Reach.

  Christ, he thought. I’ll probably pull my gut doing it. Wear myself to death, listening.

  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  The fatigue. It can be tough. It’s not easy. It’s not something that happens to you while you stand idly by; it’s something you do at great labor and over a great deal of time. You have to blow on it, cull it, fan it, breathe your life out onto it to keep it there.

  You invent it, he thought to himself. And then you maintain it until it’s true.

  Going to the intercom he pressed the key and said, “Is anybody down there?”

  He waited. Nobody.

  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  “Get to work,” he said into the intercom. Downstairs, in the empty service department, his voice would be booming out. He imagined it, the echo in the
darkness. “Get off it and work,” he said. “Get off your ass, down there.”

  I’m talking to myself, he said.

  “What are you doing?” he said into the intercom. “Are you just sitting there? Asleep?”

  You’re sound asleep, he said to himself.

  “Answer me,” he said. “I know you’re down there.” I’m not alone, he said to himself. I know it. “Come on,” he said, pressing the key. He rotated the control on the intercom to the maximum volume. “Answer me!” he said. The floor beneath him vibrated. My voice, he thought. Under me. From under the ground.

  Hanging up the telephone, Pete approached the counter. “Hey,” he said to Roger, “what are you doing?”

  “Talking to the service department,” he said. He let up on the key of the intercom.

  The intercom hissed.

  That night, after dinner, Virginia showed him the sweaters that she had bought on her shopping trip with the Bonners.

  “See?” she said, holding them up. “Aren’t they nice?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Did you have a good time?”

  “You know I enjoy shopping over in Pasadena.”

  “Why the hell was Chic measuring the front of my store?”

  “Was he? I guess he was measuring the frontage.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Virginia said.

  After some thought, he said, “I sure was surprised to see the eight of you come wandering into the store.”

  “Eight!”

  “Sure, counting the collie. Whose is that?”

  “It belongs to Walter and Jerry. It’s very gentle and mannerly.”

  From where he sat he could not see her face. He wondered if he should raise the question about his having gone over to the Bonners. Which was worse, raising it or not raising it?

  No way to know that, either. No way to know anything for certain. Unclear glimpses. Possibilities. Leads, hints…he gave up.

  Maybe I’m lucky, he thought. That there’s no real knowing. Just suspecting. What a difference between the two.

  Confirmation—that was the thing that was lacking. They could wander forever without getting it. Or it might drop in their laps. Confirmation for him, for what he suspected; or for Virginia, if she suspected anything.