“But I had love for such a short time,” she says. “What a gyp! What a gyp my life has been! Really, you have to admit that, Arthur. I had someone for less than a month and now he’s gone and I will never know love again!”
And then maybe Arthur makes a mistake. Because he tells her that she might meet someone else. And she begins to wail. She says, “Oh, Arthur, no one even sees you when you get old except for people who knew you when you were young.”
He guesses she’s right. He stops talking. He just sits there, his eyes on her tortured face.
And then she abruptly stops crying. “Oh, well,” she says. “Are you hungry, Arthur?”
“I guess I am. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I am, too. I have some pudding. Would you like some pudding?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“All right.” She gets herself onto her knees, and then, in a miracle of physiology, she swiftly hoists herself up to a standing position. She offers her hand to Arthur and helps him to get up. “Good thing you’re so skinny,” she says. “Let’s go.”
“Do you want to pull your car in?” he asks.
She looks over at it. “Oh. No.”
“I could probably do it for you.”
“I don’t want to move it until morning. I don’t think I can explain why.”
“I understand.” And he does. The car there, it’s a kind of memorial service.
He grabs the flowers and follows her into the dining room, where she has set a beautiful table. Crystal. China. Silver. Cream-colored napkins, folded just so. Arthur puts his bouquet in the center of the table and sits down. Tick…tock, says the grandfather clock. Tick…tock. Arthur clears his throat against the quiet.
Lucille comes out of the kitchen with a tray on which are six glasses of white pudding topped with a beautiful burgundy-colored something.
“White chocolate pudding with blackberry curd,” she says, as though she is announcing the president of the United States. She puts one glass before him, then another, then a third. He says nothing about this. He will eat every bite. Lucille puts the other three glasses at her place, sits, and lifts her spoon. And so they begin to go on.
—
On a hot day early in July, Arthur is at the cemetery when he hears a familiar voice. “Hey, Truluv!”
Arthur spins around so fast he nearly falls off his fold-up chair.
“Maddy!”
He’s so glad to see her, he hugs her. Doesn’t even think about it, just reaches over and grabs her. She stiffens, then steps back, but when he looks into her face he thinks she’s pleased.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Well, I think the question, young lady, is: How are you?”
If how she looks is any indication, she’s great. She’s not so deathly pale as she was, there’s a light in her eyes. And there’s something else, the biggest thing: she’s smiling.
“I’m good!” she says.
Should he tell her that he met with her dad? Something tells him not to. Something tells him to go slow. “Where have you been?” he asks. “I look for you every day. Once I even called you, shouted out your name really loud, probably woke up all the sleeping souls.”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
“You did?”
She points to the line of trees. “I was over there. I heard you, but I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. Things got bad for a while. Really bad.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, but I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried about you!”
“You were?”
“ ’Course! We’re friends, aren’t we?”
She looks away, as though she’s weighing the evidence.
“I’m your friend, anyway,” he says. “And after seeing you every day and then not at all, why, I just naturally got worried.”
“A lot has happened,” Maddy tells him, and then falls silent.
Finally, Arthur says, “What has happened?” and Maddy blurts out, loudly, “Well, I’m pregnant, for one.”
“That’s…Are you glad?”
She looks down. “I didn’t plan it, but I’m keeping it.”
“A baby is a miracle. It’s one of those things that everybody says, but it happens to be true.”
She nods, looks at him gratefully. “Yeah, that’s what I think. My dad didn’t exactly feel that way. That’s why I ran away.”
“Where’d you go?”
Maddy laughs. “At first”—and here she makes a wide, sweeping gesture—“I came here. I slept out here for three nights. I thought I’d be scared, but I wasn’t scared one bit. I was cold, but I wasn’t scared. I washed up in the girls’ bathroom every morning before school, right after the janitor got there. Then my teacher, Mr. Lyons, he asked what was up. I ran into him one morning in the parking lot on my way to the bathroom. He’d noticed I was wearing the same outfit every day, you know….He’s a good guy. So I just…Well, I told him everything. And told him I was going to graduate and then run away to Montana. He told me I could stay with him and Mrs. Lyons as long as I got some counseling and called my dad every day to let him know I was okay. So I’ve been seeing this really nice social worker and staying with the Lyonses. And being with them is like…I don’t know. It’s like I was living in a jar. With the lid on tight. And now I’m out and I never knew about all this air and all this light. You know? It’s like I’d never seen in color before, and now I do.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful,” Arthur says. “So are you going to marry this fellow?”
Such a bitter laugh coming from such a young woman. “Nooooo. Nope, I’m never going to see that fellow again. Strictly a sperm donor, that’s how I think of him.”
“He…?” Arthur doesn’t know quite how to ask what he wants to without hurting her feelings.
But she answers anyway. “He wants no part of this baby. Or me. Which is fine, because I want no part of him. The social worker fixed it so he has no legal claim on the baby, not that he wanted one. But Mr. Lyons, he helped me apply to an art college that has a special dorm for single mothers! You get a roommate who’s a single mother, too, and you live in a four-bedroom suite, everybody gets their own bedroom! He’s pretty sure I’ll get in and will even get a scholarship because of…Well, I write poetry and I take photographs. He sent some of my stuff to the school, and he says my chances of getting in are excellent!”
“That’s great, Maddy. So you’d go this fall?”
“No, I would start the spring after the baby is born. It’s due on Christmas Day.”
“Oh, my. Isn’t that nice! Isn’t that just wonderful!”
She laughs, and he says, “What?” but she just shakes her head.
“So then you’ll stay with your teacher until school starts?” Arthur asks.
“Well, no. I don’t want to do that, even if they asked me to, which they didn’t. My social worker and I have been talking about options.” She looks at him. “Could I be your housekeeper in exchange for room and board? Do you need a housekeeper?”
A housekeeper! What a luxury that would be. “Why, yes, I do!” he says.
And now everything becomes delicate, somehow. And so Arthur says, “Do you do windows?” and she laughs.
“I will,” she says.
“Why don’t you bring your things over?” Arthur says. “And then we’ll talk. We’ll figure out your salary and whatnot, I won’t have you work without a salary. I have a bedroom overlooking the front yard that you can have. You can see my rosebushes from there, did you know I have sixty different varieties? Sixty varieties and all different colors, I’ve even got silver! The room is painted yellow, like the sun is just pouring in there.”
She says nothing.
“But you can paint it whatever color you want,” Arthur says.
“I like yellow,” Maddy says, and then she begins to cry. She wipes under her nose like a boy. “People are just…Everything has just changed so much,” she says. And then, “Thank you, Truluv.”
“Thank you,” he says.
/>
“Can I come over tomorrow?”
“You can come over yesterday.”
She laughs. “I’ll come tomorrow at around noontime. I’ll take the bus.”
“Tell that driver to be careful with you. Tell him you are precious cargo.”
“Yeah, right. See you tomorrow!”
She walks away, and Arthur stares at the headstone. “Isn’t that something?” he asks Nola. “We have a family.”
And then he notices something: Mr. and Mrs. Hamburger are gone. He looks around and sees nothing. Imagine stealing something from a grave! You’d have to be pretty desperate to do something like that. Well, whoever did it, he hopes they take care of the Hamburgers. He didn’t want them to ever be thrown away in his lifetime.
—
That night, after he eats his dinner, Arthur puts some leftovers on a plate and covers it with foil. Wieners and beans and cornbread, not so much, but something. He doctored up the beans, as usual.
He hasn’t seen much of Lucille. Well, truth be told, he hasn’t seen her at all. He has no idea what’s going on over there, but it’s time to find out.
He changes his shirt and combs his hair, inspects his teeth. As he’s going out the door, he tells Gordon, “I’ll be back. Guard the house. Shoot if necessary.”
The cat yawns.
“You don’t exactly inspire confidence,” Arthur says. Now Gordon starts to head over to him and Arthur has to quick get out before the cat can escape. Too late for him to be out now.
He climbs the stairs to Lucille’s house and coughs loudly, unnecessarily. He just wants to give her fair warning.
He knocks at the door. Waits.
Then he rings the doorbell, and here she comes, he can see her through the glass.
“Arthur.” She’s dressed in a housecoat and slippers. Her hair is all dirty, plastered to her head. Glasses crooked on her face, her flesh sagging: she’s lost more weight.
“Good evening, Lucille! Have you had dinner?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I brought you some.”
She stares at the plate he’s holding, and he knows she’s thinking about declining his offer, so he does a dishonest thing. “Hurry up and let me put it down,” he says. “It’s burning my hand!”
Alarmed, she steps aside and he carries the dish into the kitchen. He tries not to look at the mess he passes on the way; he’s never known Lucille to be a messy person, but holy mackerel. Dishes on the living room floor. Wadded-up Kleenex everywhere. Clothes tossed in the corner. A cushion from the sofa on the coffee table next to a whole slew of pill bottles. The curtains pulled sloppily shut, all wrinkled. A lamp shade askew. A terrible odor. Holy mackerel.
“Ready to eat?” Arthur asks.
“Yes,” she says, but it is more like a question than an answer.
“Well, sit right down!” He takes the foil off the plate with a flourish, which is not exactly warranted by the modest offering below. Still. He pats the chair, looks at her expectantly.
She wanders over and peers down at the plate. “Oh. Hot dogs. Hot dogs and beans.”
“Who doesn’t like that?” By God, it stinks in here, too! Dishes are piled in the sink. The garbage is overflowing.
“I’m not too fond of hot dogs,” Lucille says. “I never have been. Kids used to make fun of me because I didn’t like hot dogs. Or ice cream. Although I do like ice cream now. And I like hot dogs okay.” She looks over at Arthur through her filthy glasses. “I do appreciate it, Arthur. And it smells good. I guess I’m hungrier than I thought.”
“Okay, so, dig in!” He motions to the chair, an elegant, sweeping motion he thinks is worthy of Fred Astaire, and she sinks into it, then looks sadly up at him. “But I have nothing for you.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he says. “After all the things you’ve baked and given me?”
“Well, I guess that’s right,” she says. “I haven’t been doing too much baking, though.” She takes a bite of the beans. “Oh, my. These are awfully good. What kind are they?”
“They’re Arthur Moses brand. I make ’em myself. A little catsup, a little onion, a little bacon, a little maple syrup.”
“Well, they’re very good,” Lucille says. “You could add mustard next time, though, and that would give them a kind of barbecue flavor.”
“Is that right?”
“Um-hum.”
“Mustard, you say!”
“Yes, but only French’s mustard.”
See? She’s perking up a little, getting bossy. He had a friend who was in AA who told him they taught the members never to get too tired, too sad, or too hungry. Bad things could happen.
He watches Lucille eat a little faster, his heart aching. It’s something to feed someone who is so in need of eating. It’s something to feed somebody, period.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asks.
She nods. “There’s some juice in the fridge. Papaya.”
He goes to look, but there’s no juice. There’s only milk. He picks up the container and, without opening it, can smell how bad it’s gone. He puts it back and turns around to tell Lucille, “Well, no juice! But I’ve got a great idea. I’m going to get you a beer. Do you like beer?”
“Yes. I like a beer every now and then.”
“You think a beer would taste pretty good with that hot dog?”
“Yes.”
“Wait there,” he says.
Arthur goes back to his house for a beer, opens it, and as he goes back out the door, Gordon slips out. “Gordon!” he calls. “Get back here. Come!”
Ha ha ha! says Gordon. More or less. Ha ha, and he runs off as fast as he can, ears back, tail straight up in the air like a ship’s mast.
That coyote is still wandering around their neighborhood. “Gordon!” Arthur calls. But Gordon is at the cat bar having a cocktail. He won’t be back for hours.
Arthur brings the beer into Lucille’s house and is happy to see that she has finished everything.
“That was very good, Arthur,” she says. “Thank you.”
He hands her the beer, and she takes a long pull. “Also good,” she says. She looks at the label. “Schlitz. Well, that’s a nice beer.”
“I like it,” Arthur says. He sits down and scooches his chair closer to Lucille, puts his hand over hers.
“How are you doing, Lucille?”
She shrugs. “I’m fine.”
“Have you been out at all?”
“No. I haven’t been anywhere. I haven’t even been out on my porch.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed.”
“I haven’t even watered my garden.”
“I could do that for you.”
“Would you?”
“Well, of course I will. Maybe tomorrow I could water your garden, and then we could clean up a little in here?”
“Arthur, I just don’t have the energy.”
Frankly, Arthur doubts that he has that much energy, either. Not enough to tackle this mess.
“I know it’s bad,” Lucille says. “But I can’t seem to do anything.”
“Wait a minute,” Arthur says. “I hired a housekeeper today! She’s coming tomorrow. A nice girl, just graduated high school and she’s on her way to art school, real nice girl. She’s going to live with me and be my housekeeper until she starts college next spring. You could hire her, too!”
Lucille fiddles with the top button of her housecoat. “I don’t know. I like everything just so.”
Arthur looks around. Then he looks at her.
“Oh, all right,” she says. “Maybe I do need help. Maybe I will hire her. How much does she charge?”
“I have no idea.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Lucille says, and smiles—oh, look, she is smiling!
But the stench in the kitchen is really getting to him. He feels light-headed. “Lucille, my friend,” he says. “Would you like to go out on the porch?”
“I would,” she says, “but I feel I should get dr
essed first.”
“You’re fine,” he says. “It’s dark enough.”
She hesitates, pats her hair. “Maybe I’ll just brush my teeth. You go ahead. Go on out there.”
Arthur waits on the porch for a long time. He’s just about to get up and knock on the door again when Lucille comes out. Her wig is on. Lipstick is on. A good deal of perfume is on. And she’s wearing a lovely pink dress with a rhinestone belt.
Arthur stands. “Well. Lucille. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
She sits down and begins to rock. She has shoes on with tiny little heels. Black patent heels.
“Is that a new dress?”
She nods. “Yes, I was going to wear it for my wedding.” She stands up and does a slow spin. “See what it does? See what it would have done when we were dancing?”
“Very nice,” Arthur says.
“Do you know what I did the day after Frank died, Arthur? I made a midnight cake and I put every pill in my house and in my purse into the batter. While it was baking, I found my old high school yearbook from senior year, and I looked at Frank and I looked at me. And then I sang some old songs. ‘Gonna take a sentimental journey,’ ” she sings, and her voice is surprisingly pleasant. “I tried to sing ‘Smile though your heart is aching,’ but that just made me cry. I sang hymns: ‘Just a closer walk with Thee.’ I sang ‘All my trials, Lord, soon be over,’ and that’s just how I felt, that soon all my trials would be over, and I was so happy about that, that I would know the peace that passeth all understanding.
“When the cake was done, I frosted it with a double batch of cream cheese frosting. I ate the whole thing, real fast, and the whole time I was eating, I was thinking, God forgive me, God forgive me. But then I threw it all up. And I sat on the bathroom floor and I…Well, I just emitted this loooong burp. The longest burp I ever heard in my life. It practically echoed off the walls.”
Arthur has to restrain himself to keep from laughing out loud.
“I guess some people might think that’s funny,” Lucille says, and Arthur looks over to see if he’s been caught out. But she’s not even looking at him, she’s staring off into the night. Still, he affects a deeply sorrowful expression.
“As for me, I thought it was the most mournful sound I’d ever heard. Odd and mournful, like whales singing. People say they’re singing, but it sounds to me like they’re keening. I think that’s just how I sounded.”