The Land of Mango Sunsets

  It was in the low thirties outside, windy and damp. Because I had foolishly worn a skirt with low-heeled pumps, the stiff breeze stung my legs every time I crossed a block. I took my rolling cart as I needed paper towels and other bulky and heavy things, and congratulated myself for thriftiness in saving a delivery fee, as though ten dollars more in my pocket would change my life. I was fighting my way up Third Avenue and caught a side view of myself in a shop window. I was slouching again and reminded myself that standing up straight took off years and pounds. Then I had a sudden urge to call my mother to take my mind off the fact that I was freezing. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.

  She answered right away.

  “Mother?”

  “Miriam? Is that you?”

  “Yes. I, uh, just wanted to let you know that I got home all right.”

  “Well, praise the Lord! You sound out of breath. Where are you?”

  “Walking up the street on the way to food-shop.”

  “Food-shop. What an odd term. How’s the weather? It’s beautiful here.”

  I noticed a handsome, well-dressed older man next to me at the corner of Sixty-fourth Street and knew instinctively he was eavesdropping on my conversation.

  “It’s beautiful here, too,” I lied, and looked him in the face. “The sun’s shining and the birds are singing—it’s a gorgeous afternoon.”

  He smiled and shook his head. The light changed and we crossed the street along with ten or so others. I looked around a minute later and he was gone. But that was how it was in the city. You could make a connection in a split second, and in the next, the relationship was over, having served its purpose in letting you know you were not alone on the planet.

  “Well, that’s fine, sweetheart. It sure was good to see you.”

  “I loved being with you, too, Mother. Good for the soul. You know, someday, you’re going to have to teach me how to cook.”

  She laughed a little and I could feel her cheerfulness actually lift me a little.

  “Well, you’d better hurry up,” she said. “I’m not going to last forever, you know.”

  “And, Mother, I’m sorry about the unpleasant words we had on the porch last night. It’s just that sometimes I feel like my life has never been my own, you know?”

  I could hear her sigh deeply and then she said, “Yes, but it is now, Mellie, and if it’s not, you had better take control and grab all the happiness you can before it’s too late.”

  I knew she was right and told her so. We talked a little more and then hung up, but not before I asked her to thank Harrison for introducing me to Manny Sinkler and to ask Harrison to tell Manny that I had enjoyed meeting him.

  “Just ask him to pass it along to him, would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Manny was pleasant and I didn’t get the chance to thank him for a nice evening.”

  “Yes, you did say that.”

  “He’s got a gorgeous house, Mother. Really gorgeous.”

  “Aha! And could you see yourself living there? Hmm?”

  “What? Me? Oh! Oh, no! Nothing like that. I was just thinking that if Harrison wanted to take you out there, you should go and see it. He’s got a small fortune in copper pots.”

  She was quiet and I could almost hear her thinking that if I was unmotivated by romance, perhaps I was a gold digger.

  “Or don’t tell him anything,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “We’ll see. If my memory holds up, I’ll pass along the message.”

  Sometimes Miss Josephine could be exasperating, too.

  I was nosing around the butcher’s department debating the merits of free-range chicken versus milk-fed veal versus organically raised lamb. I was in the mood for stew. Ever since I’d eaten Manny Sinkler’s stew, it was all I could think about. Not the man but the food, which told me something about my state of mind. What had I been thinking anyway? He lived a thousand miles away, was still married to some degree, and, I reminded myself for the tenth time, he had not called, although it had only been twenty-four hours.

  I decided on dark-meat chicken, thinking it was the closest thing to quail that I would find without spending a fortune on specialty fowl from some couture purveyor of exotic food. I also noted that what New Yorkers thought was rare and exotic—quail, wild turkey, pheasant, shrimp, crab, and on and on—flew or swam all over the Lowcountry and you could have all you could catch for the small cost of a hunting or fishing license. What a world, I thought.

  I was anxious to get dinner started and opened my door, lugging the bulging cart behind me. It was a bit of a space problem to close the front door without dinging the walls, but I managed to get into my apartment with everything intact. I dropped my coat, hat, and gloves on the chair by the fireplace and then collapsed on the couch when I realized I had not seen that day’s mail. I didn’t feel like getting up and hanging my coat and unpacking my groceries, only to mess up the kitchen making a stew that might or might not turn out tasting like Manny’s quail concoction. And what if Kevin was out? What if I had to eat it alone? Was I going to feed Liz? No, I was not going to feed Liz. Then it dawned on me that if I was missing the mail, it was probably in her apartment and I became irate at the thought of it. Maybe it would reappear in the hall as soon as she realized I was home. Patience, Mellie, I told myself, was a virtue.

  It crossed my mind to call Manny and ask him how he seasoned his stew; then I decided against it. I would cook first and worry about the taste later. Meanwhile, I could hear Liz overhead clomping around in what sounded like size 16 army boots on a three-hundred-pound Marine. Surely she had some modicum of understanding about acoustics. I had thought about it, and the more I considered it, the more I was convinced I had leased the apartment to the wrong person. When the moment arrived I was going to set things straight between us.

  I pushed myself up from the sofa and pulled the groceries into the kitchen, deciding to start dinner. Everything was put away and onions sizzled in a small amount of bacon fat I had combined with canola oil. My kitchen smelled good and I knew the aromas would work like a lasso on Kevin’s neck the minute he stepped through the door. At least I hoped so. I dropped some chopped celery in the pot and was digging around for the bottle of dried bay leaf when I remembered I had used the last one in a soup several weeks ago. My choices then were to go back out in the cold, borrow some from Kevin when he got home, take the odd chance that Liz had some, although I suspected she had never heard of it, or do without it.

  I turned off the stove, went up the stairs, and knocked on her door.

  Liz opened it with my mail in her hands.

  “What are you doing with my mail?” I said with no expression. My voice was annoyed and I didn’t care.

  “Oh! I just scooped it all up from the floor and brought it up here to sort and I was just about to bring it back to you when you knocked on the door…”

  “Please do not touch my mail.”

  “Mrs. Swanson? Are you aggravated with me?”

  “Do you have any bay leaf?”

  “I was just trying to do you a favor. I wasn’t going to take your catalogs. What’s bay leaf? Christmas candles?”

  As I suspected, this nitwit did not even know what a bay leaf was.

  “Holiday candles are indeed available with the scent of bay leaf, but I am looking for the real thing to flavor a stew I am making.”

  “Mrs. Swanson? You seem really aggravated.”

  She handed me the mail and I decided to reveal the source of my annoyance.

  “Liz? May I come in for a moment?”

  “Of course! Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you. I can only stay for a few minutes.”

  I looked around her apartment and it looked more like a college coed’s furnishings than an adult’s. I mean, she had a mug rack and a box of pizza on the kitchen counter and a Lava lamp in the living room. Everything was tidy enough but Kevin had been correct as usual—all this stuff could’ve been bought
at a yard sale or found on the curb. She sat on the sofa and it only seemed right that I sit as well, so I perched on the edge of a slipcovered armchair.

  “Liz…”

  “Gosh, Mrs. Swanson, what could I have done?” She was getting upset, and her big blue eyes were becoming watery and red. She probably thought her check had bounced and that I was throwing her out.

  “Look, Liz…” I started again, and then became very nervous. I mean, wasn’t one of my problems that I thought I was in charge of the world?

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Um, you need a rug. Every time you walk across the floor in shoes it rattles the plates in my kitchen.”

  “A rug? That’s it?”

  “Actually, you need two rugs. One for the living room and something that particularly muffles sound for the bedroom. Maybe wall-to-wall. With extra padding.”

  She looked at me for a moment and then it dawned on her that I could hear every spring squeak and worse. She blushed and smiled sheepishly.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Swanson. How terrible for you! I wondered why you were playing your music so loud.”

  “Well, now you know.” I was only partially relieved, but there was the other half of the story to tell. And I had a lump in my throat the size of a walnut. “Now, you are a young woman and what you do is your business, but I think you need to know that I know Truman Willis.”

  “Truman? How do you know Truman?”

  “He’s the husband of one of my close friends.”

  There. It was said. Her eyes expanded so wide that it seemed physically impossible that someone without an ocular disorder could perform such a feat without disaster.

  “No! No way!”

  “Yes. Way. He is married to Agnes Willis and we volunteer at the museum together all the time. I have known them for twenty years. When Charles was my husband we sat together at all the benefits. Apparently, he has no idea this is my house.”

  “Or he doesn’t care. Ohmagawd! That creep! Another married creep!”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No! How can men just lie like that? What’s the matter with them?”

  “Honey, the divorce courts are filled with them. Look what Charles did to me?”

  “Same thing?”

  “Worse. He had children with her.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Taking the Lord’s name in vain won’t change the male species, you know.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that—”

  “Look, let me just say this and get it off my chest. I’m not thrilled to have a tenant who sleeps with married men under my own roof. That precise act is what brought me to the point of renting out the rooms that used to house my family.” I stood and said, “I’ve got a chicken waiting for me that needs attention.”

  “I understand. It won’t happen again. Sorry about the mail.”

  “Sorry about Truman,” I said, and left. “In the future, just take yours and pile the rest of it on the table.” She didn’t know about Truman’s marital status? My big fat fanny!

  “No problem,” she said, “and I’ll see about rugs tomorrow.”

  I went down the stairs, leaving her alone with a cold pizza. Poor me, I thought as the hour became late and I ate alone with no knowledge of Kevin’s whereabouts. “Poor all of us,” I said out loud as I covered Harry’s cage with a sheet.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night, sweetheart,” I said, and wondered if she would continue to see Truman anyway. That would tell me a lot about her.

  The morning came cold and clear and I rushed around gathering additional address lists from prior events. I was determined to do such a wonderful job on the invitations committee that everyone would surely notice. Maybe I would make a new friend. I mean, who knew? Anything was possible!

  I walked over to Park Avenue, and for the life of me, I couldn’t get an uptown cab. I walked over to Madison and found someone getting out of one, so I hopped in. Normally I would have taken the Madison Avenue bus, but I felt like treating myself to a private car.

  “Fifth Avenue and Eighty-second, please,” I said.

  No response, which suited me fine. And inside of the proverbial city minute I wondered why I had thought a cab ride would be such a treat. This lunatic jerked the car this way and that and it was absolutely nauseating. I ate a mint.

  Soon I was showing my volunteer ID to the security guard and taking the elevator down to the bowels of the museum and the volunteer room. When I opened the door it was madness inside. About forty women, many of whom I knew casually, were chatting, drinking coffee, and eating bagels or Danishes, carrying boxes from one side of the room to another, talking on cell phones and so on, and all of them were dressed like they were having lunch later on at La Grenouille.

  Long folding tables were placed all around the room in a large horseshoe. Boxes of the invitations were on one table, the response cards and envelopes were on another table, and the directions were on a third. The Mount Fuji of outside envelopes were given by the box to individuals charged with the task of writing out perfectly spelled names and double-checked addresses. I was to be one of the chosen.

  The rest of the volunteers walked in circles, from table to table, box to box, collecting and collating the inserts in appropriate little stacks to slip in the outside envelope. When they were sealed and stamped, another team of efficient women arranged them alphabetically by zip code in stacking baskets provided by the post office.

  “Oh, Miriam! I’m so glad you’re here! Why don’t you sit by Diane over there?”

  It was Laura Routentout, a young woman whom I privately called Rotten Tooth, as her bulimia resulted in frequent replacements to the caps of her teeth.

  “Oh! Of course, Laura! How are you?”

  “Fine! Good! You know…just hoping we don’t have too many duplicates and too many errors. The usual. Can you stick around and help me take the bins to the post office?”

  “Why, sure…” I said, and felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “Darling, ladies don’t schlep,” said Agnes Willis, who popped up from nowhere. “We simply call the maintenance men to bring a flatbed dolly, roll them out to the loading docks, and the post office will pick up. Two phone calls and we’re all set.”

  “Oh,” Laura said, and turned scarlet.

  Agnes smiled a prim little tight smile at me and said, “New girl,” referring to Laura. “Her husband’s firm endowed the Impressionist speaker’s series for the museum.”

  “How wonderful,” I said, smiling, and wished she would drop dead for constantly reaffirming my downward spiral.

  We worked through the morning, gobbling down half of an overstuffed turkey sandwich and countless cups of coffee and tea, and we continued into the afternoon. By four o’clock I was nearly cross-eyed from the scrutiny it took to make sure I didn’t make any errors. I felt like an eighteenth-century schoolgirl, painstakingly working with a quill and inkwell to avoid blots of ink or errors of any kind. Call me Elsie Dins-more, the poor little wretch of my childhood reading. But we all consoled ourselves with the rewards of our efforts. Thousands of invitations were ready to mail.

  Some of the women were picking up the sandwich trays, and Diane and I decided to take the coffee urns down to the kitchen to help out. We unplugged them and felt their sides—still warm but not dangerously hot.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Diane went in front of me, and as she opened the door, someone else pushed against it from the other side. It was Agnes Willis. Diane backed into me and regained her balance. But I was midstep, lost my footing, and went flying like something from an Abbott and Costello slapstick routine. The entire contents of my urn, the muddy coffee and the soggy nasty grinds, spread themselves in drips and clods over three huge bins of sealed, stamped, and hand-addressed envelopes.

  The room became silent for the first time that day and then the gasping started.

  Oh no! The invitations! What happened? Oh no!

  With
a quick glance from where I was lying across the center of the floor, I could see that more than half the invitations were completely ruined.

  “Get up, Miriam.”

  I looked up to see Agnes Willis standing over me. I struggled to my knees. My stockings were ripped, my knees were bleeding, and my reading glasses were swung around, dangling down the center of my back. Needless to say, I was mortified right down to my DNA. Finally, Diane offered me her hand and I got up to my feet.

  “You stupid clumsy sow,” Agnes Willis hissed in my face. “Just get out.”

  The room inhaled a collective gasp and I knew they waited to see what I would say in response.

  I looked at her squarely and so many things went through my mind. Yes, I was deeply embarrassed, but Agnes had broken the golden rule of the volunteer world and of the polite world at large—that you never humiliate anyone, especially someone less fortunate. I had her securely in my crosshairs.

  “Agnes?”

  I crooked my finger at her face and motioned for her to move closer so I could whisper my response. For a split second she hesitated, probably unsure that I might or might not deliver the well-deserved slap across her wizened face. Finally, she moved in and so did every other ear in the room.

  “What?”

  I looked her straight in the eyes and decided against whispering. “Your husband is screwing the ever-loving daylights out of my beautiful, blond young tenant.”

  “What! How?”

  Large eyes seemed to be a popular phenomenon.

  I removed my security ID from around my neck, held it between my two fingers, and let it drop to her feet. “How?” I said, threw my tote bag over my shoulder, and held the door open for myself. “With enthusiasm, Agnes. With great enthusiasm.”

  Chapter Ten

  RUFFLED FEATHERS AND WORSE

  Hot angry tears of bitterness drenched my cheeks. I couldn’t make them stop. I ambled home from the museum in a state of disbelief, literally stumbling here and there on cracks in the sidewalk and accidentally bumping into people. The full force of the degradation, the terrible embarrassment I had just experienced, continued to send shock waves through me. I relived it over and over. I didn’t know what to do at first—where to go, whom to call—I just wanted to run, run away and never see any of them again. The only place I had to run and hide was Sixty-first Street. There was no girlfriend to call, no husband who would say there, there, it’s all going to be all right, that those women were a sorry lot of pretentious eating disorders who thought they were important because of their husbands’ careers and bank accounts. That they were nothing, that I was someone worthy of consolation. And I had not heard from Manny since my return, not that I would have told him this story anyway.