Tabitha fretted: “I never eat so late, usually. Now I’ll have trouble sleeping through the night.”
Damned if I was going to apologize for having made my aunt’s supper too late. I suggested Sleepytime tea, I’d noticed in one of the cupboards.
Tabitha sighed, as if the effort of preparing tea was beyond her. She’d have had no idea where the box of tea was, I supposed.
“The thoughts that come into my head, when I can’t sleep! Oh Nikki, I miss them both.”
Naively I asked who did she miss?
“Your mother, Nikki, and your father. Who else would I be talking about! All this while you’ve been here, Gwen has been with us, too—hasn’t she? You must have felt her.”
I could not believe what Aunt Tabitha was saying. Yet she was setting the last of the plates on the counter to “dry in the air,” quite calmly.
“Really, Nikki. You’ve never been in this house by yourself, have you? I mean, without Gwen?”
This was so. I had not.
“Gwen will always be with us. In her way.”
I glanced around, nervously. Was this so? Was Mom near? My aunt’s kitchen was so dimly lighted, you could imagine a vague hovering shape in the farther corner, beyond the refrigerator.
Tabitha said, sighing: “It hurts so, Nikki, when people younger than you pass away. Why, Jon was only fifty-nine, and Gwen was…” Tabitha’s voice quavered with reproach, as if my parents had betrayed her.
My impulse was to apologize. I’m sure they didn’t die intentionally, Aunt Tabitha!
As if reading my thoughts, and disapproving, Tabitha said, in her grim-Grandma way: “They were not a natural couple, I’m afraid. Not what you’d call ‘compatible.’”
My heart beat frightened and excited. It was as if, as she’d been absentmindedly opening and shutting drawers, Aunt Tabitha had suddenly opened a door to reveal my mother and my father inside, not the long-deceased Uncle Edmund. I wanted to protect them, yet had to know more.
“What do you mean, Aunt Tabitha? Mom and Dad loved each other very much…”
Tabitha fluttered her hands impatiently, as if brushing away flies. “Oh, of course! Of course they did. But ‘love’ doesn’t mean ‘compatible,’ dear. Edmund Spancic III and I, we were ‘compatible.’” She spoke with a kind of spirited pride, as if daring me to contradict her. “We hadn’t fallen ‘head-over-heels-in-love’—‘in love at first sight’—as Jon seems to have done with Gwen—we’d known each other for years. It was a very different sort of relationship. Before Gwen, Jon hadn’t ever cared for anyone, any girl I mean; he’d hardly seemed to notice them. Oh, your father was very picky! We never thought he would find a girl to take out, let alone marry, yet one day lo and behold he brought this little Gwen Kovach to meet my parents—‘Feather’ she was called. I guess Gwen was out of high school by then, but you’d never guess from seeing her: she looked sixteen! I never called her ‘Feather’ nor did Jon, such a silly name, but Jon liked it, I think, that other people did. Gwen was so pretty, and so sweet, so very friendly and bubbly, in the way that high school cheerleaders are, except Gwen seemed to mean it, she was always smiling. But she was never, you know, forward. In fact she was shy. She’d never disagree with anyone, she’d never dream of interrupting. She smiled so, and lit up the gloomiest rooms, but she wouldn’t say much. Jon had never been one to carry on much himself, he kept his serious thoughts to himself, like our father, but with Gwen, he’d just stare at her, and you could see that he adored her. ‘Gwen is nothing like me,’ he’d say. ‘She’s nothing like any of us.’ Because the Eatons have always been so serious, especially in those days, forty years ago. But Gwen could melt the iciest heart, I swear.” Tabitha smiled, recalling. “It wasn’t until years later that Gwen confessed to me, right here in this kitchen, that it had been all nerves—‘My mouth just smiles, like animals bare their teeth when they’re afraid.’”
Tabitha’s mimicry of my mother’s voice was uncanny. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh, or cry.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug my big-bosomed aunt, or push past her and run out of the house.
“…yes, Jon married ‘for love.’ And Gwen, too. I think. Of course, they had their difficult times. It can’t have been easy, being married to a man like my brother. ‘Was Jon always so quiet at home?’ Gwen asked me once, so plaintive, not that she was complaining about her husband, Gwen never complained of Jon to a living soul, that I know of, and I laughed and told her, ‘Quiet? Jon’s nickname was “Clam.” ’” Tabitha laughed now, recalling. “Another time, poor Jon came over here, so upset, I’d never seen my brother so upset—‘Gwen is thinking of leaving me. She won’t explain why.’ And that time I just laughed, too, hearing such a thing. As if ‘Feather’ could go anywhere on her own! And Jon said, with this anguished look, ‘She isn’t “Feather,” Tabitha. She’s never been “Feather.” I married a girl named “Feather” and that girl never existed.’ I said, ‘Jon, you always thought that name was silly. Just go back home, and Gwen will come to her senses. Where can that woman go, with two little girls?’” Tabitha snorted in indignation, the notion was so absurd.
All this while I was staring at Tabitha, in dread of what I was hearing. Two little girls?
“Aunt Tabitha, what do you mean? Mom was thinking of leaving Dad—when?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I hardly paid attention.” Tabitha’s hands fluttered impatiently. “You were a toddler, I think. Clare was in grade school. You’d been a colicky baby, crying through the night, and Clare was a husky little girl, very demanding. Maybe it was just too much for Gwen, with a husband like my brother. Still, running away was just plain silly, we all knew it.”
“Did Mom ever say anything to you?”
“I told you, dear: never. She knew such notions wouldn’t have been welcome, in this house.”
All this while I’d been digging at a discolored sink sponge with my fingernails, crumbling it. For hours afterward I would feel the pressure of tiny particles of synthetic sponge beneath my broken nails.
“But Mom wouldn’t have left Dad.”
“That’s what I told him. ‘Close out your joint checking account, “Feather” won’t go anywhere.’ Exactly what I told him.”
I didn’t know what was more upsetting: my mother’s alleged “notions,” or my aunt’s bemused disparaging of them.
“Mom wouldn’t have left Clare and me…”
An evasive-Grandma look came over Tabitha’s face. Her response was a noncommittal hum Mmmmmm.
It was a look, and a response, I didn’t care to examine.
“Of course, Nikki, your father had certain ways about him. ‘Slow to wrath’—whatever that saying is. If you offended him he could go for days without speaking to you, just kind of glare at you, then suddenly something would set him off and he’d be furious. Oh, Jon could be wounding! He tried not to show it in front of you and Clare, I think. As our father tried not to show the ‘Eaton temper’ in front of his children. Of course, Eaton men always control themselves at work, and in the presence of outsiders. Eaton men are thoroughly professional.” Tabitha’s voice dipped thrillingly, and her eyes shone behind the glittering bifocal lenses. “Clare mustn’t know this, Nikki, it’s bad enough I’m telling you because Gwen made me promise not to—but—well—your father didn’t pass away quite as people think.”
“He…didn’t?”
“When Jon had his heart attack, it wasn’t after watching Law and Order and feeling weak, lying down on the bed as Gwen told people, this peaceful look in his face, oh my no. He’d been furious as a hornet. The day before, Gwen called me sounding frightened, asking if I’d speak with Jon—and my brother comes on the phone like he’s angry with me, for heaven’s sake. Turns out the furnace in your house was having problems, breaking down and Jon would call the repairmen to come over, they’d ‘fix’ it and go away, and a few days later something else would break down, and not long before Jon had had your roof redone, which is very expensive, and yet the
roof was leaking in a few places, and Jon was somehow blaming me, I mean he was blaming poor Edmund who had passed away eighteen months before for having recommended the roofers and the repairmen, I’m not even sure that Edmund did recommend them but Jon had it in his head he had, and you couldn’t convince your father of anything once he’d made up his mind. Well! The terrible things Jon was shouting over the phone, I would never repeat, and have tried to forget. ‘I can’t stand this life’—‘Owning a Goddamn house, taking care of a house, it’s hell’—‘I’m going to sue the bastards! I’ll kill them.’” Tabitha pressed a hand against her chest, as if shaken. “Well. The next day, evidently, was even worse. Somehow, soot from the furnace got blown through the vents and there were smudged black patches all over the house, and when Jon came home from work and saw these he rushed through the rooms, red-faced and shouting, there was no reasoning with him, Gwen told me afterward she tried to calm him but he threw off her hand, he looked at her with a face ‘so ugly and hateful, I almost didn’t know him.’ You can’t wash soot off your walls in any ordinary way, you know. It has an oil base, and it smears. Gwen didn’t know this, and had tried to clean away the soot before Jon saw it, but she’d made it worse, I think, and Jon was furious at her, ‘My life, my life is breaking down, it’s defective and there’s nowhere to send it back,’ things like that Jon was saying, then he went into the bedroom and slammed the door and next thing Gwen knew he was calling for her in this strangled voice, and she heard him fall to the floor, and…” Tabitha’s voice trailed off. Her coin-eyes welled with sudden tears. “…the rest you know, dear.”
By this time I’d shredded most of the sponge. My response to my aunt’s revelation was a vague dazed smile of the kind a child might make, to indicate she’s been listening.
“Of course, we had the funeral luncheon here. And it was a beautiful luncheon, I think. Your house, with soot on all the walls, was out of the question. And too small, anyway. Those ‘ranch houses’ are just too small. You step through the front door and you’re right smack in the living room. You remember how calm your mother managed to be, she was in such a state of shock. Only I really knew. I don’t think she’d even told that Proxmire woman, she was so close to. And I only knew, because Jon had been furious with me, that was how he was sometimes, so hotheaded! Anyway, I lent your mother Daniella, in fact I paid for Daniella to clean the soot off your walls.” Tabitha laughed, recalling. “‘That oil soot is the worst, Mrs. Spancic!’ Daniella told me. ‘Like it has a life of its own, like the devil, you clean it off and it moves somewhere else. Nasty.’”
What an inspired mimic my elderly aunt was! I’d never known before, somehow.
I woke from my trance. Made my excuses and ran for my life, I mean I ran for my coat.
Tabitha followed me into the front hall. Wanting me to stay the night since it had begun to snow, large soft wet clumps like deranged blossoms blown out of the night sky. I thanked her and escaped to my car, stabbing the key in the ignition even as Tabitha called my name, appearing like a hooded apparition beside the car, a plastic raincoat flung over her head.
In the confusion of the moment I couldn’t hear what my aunt was saying. Only just the accusation, “—forgot, Nikki!”
My aunt thrust a grocery bag at me. I thanked her, and drove away. Several blocks on Church Street before I realized I hadn’t switched on my headlights.
The bag contained the peach-colored angora sweater with the seed-pearl bodice, the detachable white lace collar, the voluminous red silk blouse and the sexy black cloche hat, I would discover when I was safely home.
duet
My mouth just smiles. Like animals bare their teeth when they’re afraid.
My life is defective. Nowhere to send it back.
Through that long night of soft-falling snow I would hear them.
A love-duet.
My mom, and my dad.
“feather”
“‘ “Light as a feather”—that’s what I want my soul to be.’ This is what Gwen told me, when we were first friends.” Alyce Proxmire peered at me with small moist sparrow-colored eyes. Her thin lips twisted into a kind of smile. “This was in eighth grade, we were both thirteen. I was new at Mt. Ephraim Junior High and very shy, with braces, and glasses, and this pretty little doll-faced girl came over to me and said Hi! She was the only one.”
How like Mom’s oldest girlfriend Alyce Proxmire, that a happy memory should be laced with something bitter.
We were in my house, which Alyce persisted in calling “your mother’s house,” looking through photo albums at the dining room table. It was a week after my Church Street visit. I was still shaken by what Aunt Tabitha had told me. For months Alyce Proxmire had been leaving increasingly plaintive phone messages for me—Nikki, may I come see you? I miss Gwen so…A long pause. A snuffling sound. I even miss Smoky.
From Clare and others, I knew that Alyce Proxmire had taken my mother’s death “very hard.” Which was a good reason to avoid her: the last thing I wanted was Mom’s hypochondriac girlfriend breaking down in my arms.
Oh God! One day last summer I’d seen a car creep into our driveway, I’d seen an apparition in what looked like a nightgown (in fact, a raincoat) lurch up the front walk, recognized Alyce Proxmire and ran to hide with Smoky at the top of the basement steps. As the doorbell rang, and Alyce’s anxious voice lifted Hello? Nikki? Is anyone home? Smoky growled deep in his throat, tail twitching.
How long Alyce remained on the front stoop ringing the bell and calling for me in her plaintive nasal voice, I don’t know. It seemed like a very long time. I hid my face in Smoky’s coarse fur, overcome by a fit of laughter. My life. This is my life now. In hiding. I would learn afterward from the Pedersens next door that my visitor wandered around the outside of the house peering into windows. They’d debated whether to call the police except she’d looked harmless—“Like some old retired schoolteacher-ghost.”
I would learn from Gladys Higham across the street that Alyce had rung her doorbell, too, to ask if she’d seen me, where was I, if I wasn’t home, or wasn’t answering the door, what if something had “happened” to me?
Since May, all of Deer Creek Acres had become a terrain where something unspeakable might “happen” to a woman with the bad luck to be alone.
I was furious with Alyce Proxmire, intruding in my life. I refused to answer her calls, I tossed away her meek little notes. The woman held no charm for me. Maybe I hated it, she’d outlived Mom.
This was a time when Wally Szalla and I had lapsed into one of our intense interludes. Possibly we’d quarreled, possibly it had been my fault. I was feeling raw and tragic and not in a mood to be patient with Alyce Proxmire.
Grief is like one of those roller towels in public lavatories. Shared with too many people, it gets soiled and worn-out.
These past few months, I’d come to feel differently. I mean, I was trying. I didn’t seem to be so angry, at least not all the time. Since experimenting with Mom’s bread recipes, and having some good results. Seeing people, mostly older women I’d been avoiding. One of these had to be Alyce Proxmire, Mom’s “oldest girlfriend.”
When I finally called Alyce, and identified myself on the phone, for a moment Alyce seemed to be too startled to respond.
“Ohhhh! Nikki! I…th-thought it was…”
(That it was Mom? Were our voices, that had never been confused while Mom was alive, so similar?)
As soon as Alyce arrived at the house, sniffing and clutching a wetted tissue, she fumbled to embrace me, and gripped me in her thin tremulous arms. Her emotions were damp, sputtering: “Ohhhh. Nik-ki. Oh.”
It was a moment I had to endure. Except I seemed to recall that I’d already endured it on the day of Mom’s funeral.
“…since that evening, Mother’s Day…haven’t stepped a foot in this…Ohhhh.”
Alyce Proxmire’s grief was genuine but exasperating, like a leaky roof. I shut my eyes hoping she wouldn’t lapse into a fit of sobbing. (I ra
rely cried any longer, at least during the day. At night, in my sleep, sometimes I bawled like a baby.)
There came Gwen Eaton’s cheerleader buoyancy into my voice: “Now Alyce! Gwen would want you to be moving on with your life, you know.”
“Ohhhh I know. I know, Nikki.”
Alyce blew her nose, wetly. Since I’d seen her last, her faded-brown hair had gone almost entirely gray and was noticeably thinner. Alyce was one of those gaunt-girlish older women who “mature” from pre-pubescence to post-menopause with nothing between. Flat as an ironing board yet with a little potbelly, rounded shoulders and knobby elbows and knees. Her expression was sometimes meek, sometimes a smirk. From her days as a public school librarian she retained a peevish air of distrustful authority. Her clothes were wheat-colored, beige and brown, tarnish colors. Her scent was talcum-cobwebby. When Dad rolled his eyes over Alyce, Mom was quick to defend her: “Alyce is a good, loyal friend.”
Certainly, Alyce Proxmire was loyal.
Saying now, clutching her tissue, “…every day, every hour I think of her. If only I’d been with her that morning except I had a dentist’s appointment, root canal…Oh, it was awful!”
Alyce’s medical problems were of two types: chronic ailments, and mysterious symptoms that hadn’t yet been diagnosed as ailments. Out of politeness I had to ask Alyce how she was, and saw her brighten at the prospect of telling me. There was a tremor in her voice as she recited her chronic ailments (insomnia, asthma, migraine, “queasy” stomach and “fluttery” pulse) and the alarmingly new and novel (swollen neck glands, watery eyes, ingrown toenail, sudden fits of hiccuping, a ringing in her right ear like “a doorbell stuck at high-C”). Mom used to exasperate Clare and me by exclaiming over every symptom of Alyce’s, we were sure this only encouraged Alyce’s hypochondria, but I’d come to see that Alyce recited her litany of health problems because they were all she had to offer as “news.”