Even more than the men in the photo, Mavis found she was interested in the surroundings: There was the sofa they used to have, the nubby floral one, so comfortable—what had happened to that? There, on a table they used to have in the corner, the porcelain figure that had belonged to her mother, that Mavis had later dropped and broken when she was dusting, then sat and wept over when neither she nor Al could repair it. She hadn’t really liked it, but it was her mother’s. And her mother was gone.
Mavis had sighed, put down her dust rag. She had lain back on the bed and closed her eyes, the photo facedown on her stomach, her hand over it. She’d wished she had more pictures of everything she used to have—all her furniture, even her old refrigerator, and what was in it, too: the big, square blocks of butter in the ribbed glass container, the old flowered mixing bowls she used to have holding leftovers, covered with waxed paper and anchored with rubber bands. How could she have known that ordinary life would have such allure later on?
What plants used to be in their house? she wondered. What stamps were on the envelopes that came in the mail? How exactly did the wringer washer look, the newspaper, the bathroom scale she used to weigh herself on? Their bedroom wallpaper, didn’t it use to be flowered, those big cabbage roses? Where was the pink girdle she used to have? It had a matching brassiere with wide satin straps.
Mavis had opened her eyes and looked out the bedroom window, sighing, watching the breeze lift the leaves on the trees outside. It came to her that she wasn’t quite sure where in her life she was. Near the end, she supposed. Certainly more near the end than the beginning. Most of what a life is for, she had done: Her children were grown and had children of their own, she was retired from the job she’d taken after the youngest left home. She had traveled with Al to the extent that they were able, she had taken adult education courses, contributed as generously as she could to causes she believed in. What now? Really, what, now?
“Enough!” she’d said then, out loud, and she’d gotten up to go back to the closet and look for the album where the photo belonged. She found the album, even the right place for the photo. On the black page, in white ink, she had written in a careful, dainty script, “The boys, mesmerized. June 8, 1946.” Well, no more “girls” looking at the “boys,” asleep or awake. No more girls.
Big Jim had dropped by frequently right after Eileen died, sat stunned-looking at the kitchen table, his hands folded, watching Mavis make dinner and then eating with them. But lately he hadn’t come around. Able, finally, to stay home, Mavis decided. Or visiting others, perhaps. She and Eileen were so close it preempted other friendships, they both admitted that. Maybe now that Eileen was dead, Big Jim had made new friends. She hoped so. She knew her resemblance to Eileen was hard for Jim to bear. Hard for her, too.
Mavis starts awake, knocking her head slightly against the side of the tub. Outside the door, Al is calling her name. “One minute,” she calls, and the absurd thought comes to her that she should put on a robe. Then she shakes her head, clearing it, and goes to the door. “Hi, honey,” she says, into the crack. “How are you? Did you eat?”
“Mavis, you get the hell out of that bathroom, right now.”
“Al—”
“I’m not going to listen to any of your bull crap about a retreat, Mavis. Now, so far I haven’t done anything about it. But this is your last chance before I do.”
“Yes, you did do something about it. You called Jonathan.”
“I pretended to call Jonathan.”
“Well!” she says. And then, because she cannot help it, she says again, “Well!”
“You come out of there right now. Or I will … do something.”
She waits, and then he says, “What the hell would you do if I did this, Mavis? What would you think?”
“I would help you, Al,” she says.
“What? Speak up, I can’t hear you.”
“I say, I would help you!” She means to be tender, but it is difficult when you’re yelling.
Behind the door, Al grunts.
“I would try to understand,” she says. “I wouldn’t think it was so crazy, needing to get away from the world for a while. I would just let you do it, and I would talk to you when you wanted to talk, and when you needed things I would bring them to you, and I would not try to make you feel bad and guilty.”
Silence. And in it, his recognition that she is absolutely right.
She hears him shuffling about, changing his position, and then there is the long and heavy sound of him sliding down against the door and onto the floor. And then nothing. Is he all right? Oh, this is a terrible trick. Shame on him.
If it’s a trick.
She knocks rapidly at the door. “Al? Al?”
“What.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah!”
“Well—what are you doing?”
“I don’t know, Mavis. Did you say you wanted to talk to me?”
She sits down on the floor, too, opposite him, as far as she can tell. “You know, honey,” she says, “I’m kind of tired now. I think I’d like to go to sleep.”
“How can you sleep in there, Mavis?”
“Oh, it’s fine. I lined the tub with all kinds of blankets. It’s cozy!”
“Do you have a nightgown?”
Oh, God. What else has she forgotten? “I don’t need one.”
She hears him walk away down the hall, and then he is back again, knocking. “Mavis? I’ve got your pink one, here. Is that all right?”
She smiles, opens the door, and takes the nightgown. His face is so full of something, she kisses him quickly, even if it’s cheating. Then she closes the door softly, says through it,“ ’Night, honey.”
“Good night.”
“Take your pills.”
“I know. Mavis?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve never spent a night apart.”
“I know.”
She turns out the light, feels her way back to the bathtub, and climbs in. This day passed so quickly. And has really been so interesting. Perhaps she should have said she’d be in here longer than a week.
“Mavis?”
She opens her eyes. A thin light. Early morning. She stretches, turns toward the door, speaks loudly. “Yes?”
“Are you coming out today?”
“Now, what did I tell you yesterday?”
“I know, but… I thought maybe you just had a bad day.”
“No, I had a good day.”
“But Mavis … Jesus. Don’t you think this is a bit odd?”
“Yes, I do, but I also think it’s serving a purpose, Al.”
“Well, I don’t get it. I really don’t. If you want to be on retreat, Mavis, you don’t have to stay in the bathroom all day. I go to the hospital six hours a day, you have the whole place to yourself. I’ll tell you what. I’ll call you before I come home. Then you can run right back in there before you see me.”
She can’t tell if he’s angry or amused.
“Mavis?”
“Yes?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, but I need to stay in here, Al.”
“Well, then I’ll be back after I eat dinner. I assume you’re not making dinner again.” A hopeful silence. She knows Al is leaning his better ear toward the door.
She sighs, waits.
Finally, “Fine,” he says. She hears the door slam, the car start, and he is gone.
Mavis washes her face, brushes her teeth, then sits down at the edge of the tub with the box of Wheat Thins. She’d like a cup of coffee, she can smell it from Al having made it earlier. He doesn’t usually drink all he makes. He usually sets her cup out, too, the Café Du Monde one they brought back from New Orleans. But if she goes out into the rest of the house, she’ll lose what she’s started here. She’ll see dust on the coffee table, the morning paper lying messy on the kitchen table. The phone will ring, and she’ll answer it. No. She will stay here.
When she has fini
shed with the crackers, Mavis stores them back under the sink. She puts on a clean pair of underwear, then her bra and slip. She wants to rinse her blouse, so she won’t wear that quite yet. And if she’s not wearing the blouse, why, what would the sense be in wearing the skirt? Or nylons?
She feels a prickle ascend her spine. She removes her bra, hangs it over the shower rod. Then she washes the blouse, drapes it next to the bra, and settles down into the tub with her notebook.
“Dear Eileen,” she writes. “I know you’re dead.” And then she stops, stares straight ahead.
Outside, she hears a dog barking and the occasional sound of cars passing. A bush scrapes against the side of the house. It’s the rose of Sharon they planted four years ago, loaded now with buds that will bloom in August as though in compensation for the cold that will follow. Mavis hates the winter, wonders every year why she stays in a place that is so cold. It’s as though she has a stubborn belief it won’t happen again, the astounding windchill, the air so cold it feels like sheet metal pressed up against your face when you step outside. She used to bundle the children up so hard for school they looked like pupae. “Hell, forget the cold, you’re going to kill them,” Al had told her. “They’ll suffocate.”
She stays in Minnesota, she supposes, because the fall is so beautiful. It sabotages her every year, makes her forget about what is to come. Last year, looking at the leaves when she was driving, she’d had an accident. She’d run into a lamppost on the side of the freeway, knocked it down. The car needed major repairs, she was unharmed, they were charged by the state for the cost of the lamp. “For Christ’s sake, Mavis,” Al had grumbled, paying the bill. “Keep your eyes on the road from now on, will you?” She had put a bowl of Wheatena before him, vowed out loud that she would, knew that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t help it, the leaves were so violently beautiful, and so short lasting. She wished the foliage would work in reverse, that you could see colors most of the time, the uniform green for only a few short weeks. But who could endure such richness? Surely people would go crazy from so much beauty. Or else they’d get used to it, and then ignore it, another form of craziness.
Mavis bites at her pen, looks at what she wrote, crosses it out. Well, she’s not a writer. What in heaven’s name did she think, bringing a notebook in here? She reaches up for her blouse, feels to see if it has dried at all. Not yet. Perhaps she could hang it out the window. She stands up in the tub, raises the window beside it. No. It won’t work. Nothing to hang it on. Too bad there’s no clothesline, she misses clotheslines.
She lies down in the tub again, crosses her ankles, closes her eyes, and a memory floats into her head like a dream. She is at a nightclub she and Al used to go to. They are dancing, Al in his good blue suit, she in her strapless white formal and satin high heels. She had just learned that afternoon that she was pregnant; and as Al held her close she whispered that the rabbit had died. Al had stopped dancing, held her slightly away from himself. Then, sick-looking with joy, he’d carefully escorted her back to their little round table with the lit lamp and the fancy glass ashtray holding gold-tipped matches. “I can still dance, Al,” she’d said.
“Later, you can,” he’d said. “After nine months.” And then, “It is nine months, isn’t it?”
She’d smiled yes.
“I all of a sudden didn’t know!” he’d said. “I feel … Jesus, Mavis. A baby is in you!”
She’d nodded. “I know.”
Later that night, after they’d gone to bed, Al had pulled her gently to him so that her back was against his chest. He’d raised her hair to kiss the back of her neck. “Mavis?” he’d said. “I think … I think you’re a miracle. A kind of miracle.” There was such reverence in his tone.
She’d turned to face him. “Everybody has babies, Al,” she’d said, laughing, a little embarrassed.
“No.”
“All right,” she’d said, turning back over, letting him have it. She was twenty-five then. How can she be seventy-nine now? It occurs to her that she thought she would always be … oh, thirty-two. She would grow older, but she would be thirty-two. She could be ninety, but she would still be thirty-two, and she would set the table and all her family would come when she called, the children bumping into one another as they came through the kitchen door, Al following closely behind. His sleeves would be rolled up and he would be smiling, because he was hungry and dinner was there.
Mavis opens her notebook, then closes it again. She climbs out of the tub, gets an Orangina and a candy bar and the top library book, then climbs back in.
She hears Al come in the front door, checks her watch. Five-thirty. He couldn’t have eaten already. He knocks at the door. “Mavis? You still in there?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, I wondered … would you like to have dinner with me?”
“I can’t come out, Al. I don’t want to. I’m fine.”
“Well, I know, but you have to eat. You must be starving.”
“I’ve got food in here.”
“What food?”
She is embarrassed to tell him. People’s small passions, always embarrassing, she supposes. “Just … I’ve got things to eat, Al,” she says.
“Well, you know, Mavis, I was thinking. If you did go away on a retreat, you’d go out to eat somewhere, right?”
She considers this. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“And we’d be talking, too; if you went away, you’d call me, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, of course I’d call you.”
“So let’s eat together, Mavis. Just pretend you’re out to dinner and calling me.”
“Now, you listen to me, Al, I’m getting pretty tired of telling you that I’m doing something in here! Oh, you just can’t stand it that I’m not there all the time! You and Big Jim are just alike. If Eileen went to the corner mailbox, why, he’d have to come too. Otherwise he’d be at the window watching for her the whole time. Just like a little dog!”
“Wait a minute,” Al says.
“What?”
“I meant, maybe … couldn’t I come in there and eat with you?”
“Oh!” She sits down on the toilet seat, thinks. Then she says, “I don’t think you’d like the food I have.”
“I’ll bring dinner,” he says. “I got some stuff at the store. I’ll make dinner.”
“Well, I—” She stops, astonished. He has never once made dinner. “I think that would be very nice, Al.”
“Okay. So I’ll just go fix it now.”
“All right. And Al? When you bring it in, could you bring me one of my dresses?”
“Your addresses?”
“No, one of my dresses. One of my summer dresses. I need something else to wear.”
“Oh! Sure,” he says, happily. And his happiness makes Mavis wonder if letting him in is the right decision. But when he knocks again and she opens the door to him holding a tray, her favorite blue shift lying across one of his arms, she is glad to see him.
“Come in,” she says, stepping aside. What is this she is feeling, shyness? Can it be?
For his part, he has combed his hair—Mavis sees the careful wet lines when he sets their dinner down on the floor. The tray is covered with a dish towel. A surprise, then. He hands her the dress. “Here,” he says. “Looks like you need this, all right.”
She gasps, clutches at her chest, looks down at herself, embarrassed. She is still in her slip. “For heaven’s sake,” she says. “I forgot.”
“Well.” He lifts the towel. He has brought Chinese food: the plates hold chicken chow mein, rice, and egg rolls.
“Oh my,” Mavis says. “Isn’t this nice!”
Al points to the egg rolls. “You can buy these,” he says. “Right in the grocery store. And then you just microwave them.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And of course, the chow mein, it’s just in a can. Heat it right up.”
“Right.”
“The rice, I got at Chen’s. Stopped on the way home.”
“Well, it’s all very good looking. Thank you, Al.”
“Okay.” He looks around. “Do we eat on the floor?”
“Oh.” Mavis looks around as well, then puts the tray on the lid of the toilet. “Okay?”
They kneel on either side of the tray, sit back on their heels. “Not the most comfortable thing,” Mavis says.
Al shrugs. “So. What have you been doing in here, Mavis?” He eyeballs the padded tub, the stack of magazines and books. “Reading?”
The egg rolls are still frozen in the middle. Mavis removes the bite she’d taken from her mouth, puts it on the side of her plate.
“You don’t like it?” Al asks.
She smiles apologetically.
“Well, they were on sale,” he says.
“It’s okay.”
“Chow mein’s good, though, huh?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So have you been reading, Mavis?”
“Well, I’ve mostly been thinking.”
“About what?”
“About … whatever I want, Al. Do you know, it feels like I have never in my life been able to do that. It feels like I’ve been so … I don’t know. Busy. Distracted. I just wanted to have a sense of …” She looks up at him, helpless to explain.
“Mavis, are you—” He puts his fork down, takes a breath in. “You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?” He leans slightly away from her, focusing, Mavis knows. His bifocals need replacing.
“No!”
“Well, I told someone about what you’re doing. Harriet Bencher. And she asked were we having trouble. You know. And I said, well hell, I didn’t think so. And she says, ’Al. Wake up and smell the coffee. Mavis wants to leave you. This is the first step.’ I says, ‘You’re nuts, Harriet.’ Which she is. But it got me thinking.”