Vine Leaves Press, 2024, 278 pp.
Chapter Eleven
Though no one called it a ritual, once a year, Will took Bea to the zoo. Just the two of them – a grandfather and granddaughter outing. It had been sprung on her between April and June, and each time it was an announcement rather than an invitation. No “how would you like to go to the zoo with your grandpa?” Just: “On Saturday, you and I will go to the zoo.” The first time it was proclaimed, when Bea was four, she was understandably frightened. Was it a punishment, she seemed to wonder? Flora was left to explain what all went on at the zoo and how much she would enjoy it. And she did. They did. They came back garrulous and Will provoked paroxysms of giggles from Bea by narrating the various animals’ reactions to the humans gawking at them. The following year, when Will again declared the zoo plan, Bea was elated. When Abby came to pick her up, Bea told her right away. Abby looked at her mother with raised eyebrows. Flora returned the question with a shrug. Will had never instituted any such father-daughter outings when Abby was a child, they seemed to be communicating to one another.
Will wasn’t naturally drawn to children, but he had no beef with them either. He charmed them and they him whenever he was in a situation where they were unavoidable. Perhaps, like Flora, he was compensating for parenting Abby in a less than ideal way which did nothing to help any of them now, save for Bea.
The most recent zoo announcement came during a Friday night dinner when Bea was spending the night. “Tomorrow we’ll visit the zoo,” said Will flatly. Bea, five years into the non-ritual, was accustomed to the absent fanfare and nevertheless displayed unabated enthusiasm.
“I will not abide your infernal whining!” Flora emerged from the bathtub to hear through the door that Will was shouting at Bea who had been a pill since they had returned from the zoo. She could hear Bea’s emphatic responses, which did indeed have a persistent, rhythmic aggression. Flora recognized Bea’s tired moods, and she knew the only solution was sleep. But it was only 7:30 p.m.
But when Flora dried off, put on her housecoat and entered the bedroom, she was not prepared for what she saw. Will was holding Bea’s two wrists in one hand above her head and slapping her bottom with force with the other, like an obstetrician giving a baby its first whack. Bea was crying so hard she wasn’t making any sound. Or maybe she couldn’t breathe. Flora flew at him.
“Stop it now, Will!” She struck him with both of her hands on his back as hard as she could. He let go and Bea collapsed on the bed, clutching and drooling on the bedspread and now bawling with great volume. Will stood with his hands on his hips, looking furious while Flora covered Bea’s body with her own, burying her nose in hair that still held the tang of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. She reached one hand behind her with an index finger towards Will. She sensed that the message was received and heard him leave the room. Flora and Bea stayed locked together like two animals under siege in the wild until Bea’s air-sucking sobs subsided. There was no room in her mind until she lay in bed, after interminable hours of trying to subdue her roiling head, Bea sleeping soundly beside her, to produce the compressed thought, Well, that’s it for the zoo.
Out the window of the laundry room door, Flora saw Freddy at the far edge of the yard, trimming the lawn that ran up to the section where the yellow roses were starting to come in. The roses were her least favorite flower in the yard, but it didn’t seem right to have a garden with no roses. Everyone else loved them so much, so she compromised by choosing yellow because that seemed less glaring than the traditional red. From a distance, they looked almost dogwood-like, and those really were her favorites, the bushes of them, where the green leaves and white petals lived in the same plane with one another, without the dramatic blooms popping out and brazenly announcing themselves. The three different colors of lilacs – purple, lavender and white, mostly gone now that it was nearly June – toned things down a bit, too, though their fawning fragrance, which she nonetheless did enjoy generally, would sometimes waft into the kitchen and could aggravate her depending on her mood.
She spent a lot of time looking at and appreciating the garden and wondered why people needed to go to museums when such beautiful things were naturally available and so much more accessible. You were meant to look at an abstract painting in a museum and make something of it, discern what the artist was trying to say, what great statement about life or death he was attempting to share, but Flora was never able to make anything of those art works. She just felt tired and her head ached and she waited for time to pass before it was acceptable to suggest to her sisters or to Will that they repair to the café. When she looked at her garden, however, the message was direct and it was simply this: this is life. If the Spring and Summer blooms lasted all year, she regularly asked herself, would she still hold them in such regard or would she become inured and stop seeing them? She thought she would never tire of them. She even enjoyed the beauty of the naked trees in the winter, their bones revealed, and she wanted to make sure they were appreciated, too, since without them, the lush, multi-varied green canopies wouldn’t exist now.
Freddy, she noticed now, was making his way toward the house, wiping his brow with a blue kerchief. Flora went to the kitchen to get the pitcher of iced tea ready. She heard Freddy’s soft knock on the metal screen door of the laundry room and she went back to let him in, glass in hand.
“Freddy! It’s so hot today!” Flora handed him the glass of tea and he made an imperceptible bow as he accepted it.
“Oh, it’s not too bad,” Freddy said before drinking the tea in three nearly silent swigs. Such a soft spoken man, even his gulping was quiet.
“The garden’s looking beautiful.” Flora walked back toward the family room as she spoke, hoping to get Freddy to follow her up the short flight into the kitchen, which he did, after purposefully wiping his boots on the rough mat just inside the door, though she could tell he was slightly tentative. He rarely came up beyond the first level.
“Let me get you some more tea,” Flora said as she lured him over to the kitchen peninsula where he set his glass down and she filled it again. Again, he drank robustly.
“Much appreciated, Mrs. Rose.”
“Freddy. I have a favor to ask you. If you don’t have to rush off.”
“You just name it.”
“I need to move some furniture upstairs and I’m afraid I can’t manage it by myself.”
“I’m happy to help.”
They walked up the short flight to the next level, she in her stocking feet, on tiptoe, and Freddy in his clean-on-the-bottom boots.
She entered the master bedroom and walked all the way around the bed so that she was on one side of it and Freddy was on the other. She could tell he was uncomfortable.
“Freddy, you’re so dear to help me. You see, Will’s back troubles him and he likes the mattress in the guest room better than this one, and since Bea sleeps over so often and likes to be in the room with me, and since I often can’t sleep and will stay up late reading….Well, it’s a lot to explain and it doesn’t really matter. I just want to move the bed, which is really two twin beds, apart, with one of the tables in between.”
Freddy looked at the beds and scratched his head, which reminded Flora of a cartoon character.
“Would you like to have me switch out the good mattress for this one then?” he asked, pointing first in the direction of the guest room with one hand, then pointing at the current mattress with the other hand. It was the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. That’s who he reminded her of. And she was Dorothy. Or the Wicked Witch. But not Glenda. Glenda, the Good Witch, wouldn’t put someone in this position.
“No, no, I thought of that, too,” she lied, “but that mattress is much higher than these and it wouldn’t look right, and anyway, because I often keep the light on too late at night, I just think this is best. I’m sure Dr. Rose will agree.”
Freddy nodded and looked at Flora with his gentle smile. He had been working for them for fourteen years.
Bea was delighted by the new bedroom arrangement. She took to calling the master bedroom “our room,” meaning that it belonged to her and Flora. That, in turn, delighted Flora. She was relieved that Bea didn’t press Flora on why or how the redesign had come about. She only wanted to know which bed was hers.
“Which one would you like?” Flora asked, as they stood in the doorway, surveying their territory. Bea assumed the pose that, to her, signified adult pondering, arms crossed, head tilted, right hip cocked, the left foot pointing off to the side. She pressed her lips together and really did look just like her father for a split second, the faux pausing when asked what he would like to drink, even though the answer was always, “I’ll take a Pabst, thanks. Somebody’s gotta drink ‘em!”
“I’ll take the one by the window!” said Bea as she bounded over to her new designated home away from home and propped her Crissy doll – that ghastly creature with a yankable ponytail coming out of the top of her head, so her hair could “grow” – against the pillows.
“Can we watch the sunrise tomorrow?” Bea asked, looking out the window that overlooked the MacCauley’s garage and driveway and which did also happen to face east. “I read a book yesterday about a boy in America who knew the sunrise was happening when his grandfather in Japan was watching the sun setting. And it was the same sun. I’ve seen the sunset, but I’ve never seen the sunrise.”
“We can, but you know what time it rises?” Flora asked, joining Bea at the window, pointlessly looking up at the sky.
“Seven o’clock!” Bea announced jubilantly.
“No, sweet patoot. Much earlier. Five thirty this time of year.”
“Okay, so five thirty! We can set the alarm clock tonight.”
“Yes, we will,” Flora said, though she knew she would already be awake anyway. She could hardly remember a time she had not been awake to see the bedroom fill gradually with the natural light, bringing a welcome end to her sleepless night.
The alarm clock was something she had acquired from Hammacher Schlemmer thanks to Bea spotting it and not believing it could do what it purported to which was project the time, in a red electronic readout, onto the ceiling. So Flora bought it. The idea was that one didn’t have to look toward the clock to see the time or, presumably, if you shared a bed with someone, then both people could see the numbers from any vantage point and it wasn’t commandeered by one night table. Of course it only manifested its special effect when the room was dark. And what Hammacher Schlemmer might not understand or give one whit about was that this highly accessible time telling was nothing less than torture for an insomniac.
After much re-reading of the confounding pamphlet that came in the clock’s box, Flora was able to figure out how to set the alarm, a feature she had yet to use on a clock that she’d had for nearly three months. She set it for 5:15 am because she had an inkling that Bea expected the sun to rise like a light going on, that it was a moment where it happened. Flora hoped Bea wouldn’t be disappointed that it was in reality a gradual event, like growing old. She wanted Bea to be awake when the sky was genuinely black so she could at least perhaps hold in her head the contrast. It was hard enough for Flora to do this, but then again she didn’t want to underestimate her granddaughter’s abilities. And for all she knew, the book she had read about the boy and his grandfather might have already explained this.
When they got into their respective beds, Bea was atwitter, overly excited about the early morning plan. Flora, as usual, was tired but that rarely corresponded with an ability to fall asleep. So they played their counting game. They took turns as they counted as high as they could before one of them said, “Good night,” instead of their number. They always made it at least to 100, and it was usually Bea who slurred the game ending words around 120 or so. The game was soothing for Flora, as it gave her brain a rest from other thoughts. As she uttered each number and listened to Bea utter hers, she would see the numbers decorated with all manner of costumes and floral or animal or mythical creatures weaving in and around them. The notion most likely came from Sesame Street where it seemed they were always teaching numbers and counting in psychedelic displays.
On this night, Bea was very animated in her counting and used different voices for each one, a tiny mousy voice, a distinguished British man, a possessed demon. Flora was amused and impressed for about 25, then suggested to Bea that she go back to regular voice because she was exciting herself too much and going against the game’s objective. Bea relented, made it to 105, and slyly slipped in a Dracula voice for her “good night.”
Flora stared at the red numbers on the ceiling, their robotic, squared shapes made imperfect by the stucco surface. Why and when did someone decide that is how the ceiling should be? It must have been her – Will didn’t care about such details. But who gave her the idea? A picture in House Beautiful, most likely, though she had little recollection of making any decisions. She only remembered that while the interior painting of the upstairs was going on, Will slept on the sofa in the living room and Flora stayed with Ruth at her house on the lake. The smell of the paint gave Flora headaches, and she didn’t like being at home when it was dotted with men working, loudly shouting to one another and making clunking sounds that caused her to flinch with each one. It was easier to just skedaddle. She took Toto with her, as she feared Will would forget to feed him and take him out to piddle.
Though that visit was only a few years ago, Flora felt like she was reminiscing rather than just remembering. Her eyes were still ostensibly trained on the red numbers, but the time became a mere blotch and then was replaced by other images. She saw herself carrying Toto in one hand and her overnight bag in the other as she walked up the path to the side of Ruth’s house. The screen door was closed but the inside door was open.
“Yoo hoo!” Flora called. “Toto and Flora have arrived!”
Flora heard her sister from inside the small house, a cottage really. She heard her say, “Oh for Pete’s sake! I don’t even know what time it is.” Ruth appeared at the door, in mint green slacks and a short-sleeved blouse covered in tiny bluebells, her feet in soft, leather navy loafers. Ruth was smart to never have gone in for the high heels. As a result, she was free to wear all manner of reasonable, comfortable shoes.
“Dear! I lost track of time, and I was so stupid just sitting in there fussing with the…oh, it doesn’t matter, come in. You and your little dog, too!” The last phrase was issued in the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West, a habit Ruth couldn’t seem to break herself of since Toto first came into Flora’s life nearly ten years ago. Will had wanted to name him Fauna, and despite the fact that Flora had waved away the suggestion with a begrudging chuckle, Will occasionally used it when he was in an especially bouncy mood.
“Was it a good drive?” asked Ruth as she took Flora’s bag and placed it on the Naugahide day bed in front of the enormous picture window that looked out onto the lake. “It’s such a loverly day.”
“Loverly, yes. Almost the only soul on the thruway, it felt like.” Flora sat in one of the cushioned chrome chairs at the kitchen table. The kitchen and living room were one shared space, differentiated by the linoleum floor then wall-to-wall carpeting. A small round table right inside the side door would seat three comfortably but would have to be moved away from the wall for a fourth. On the table was an avocado green plastic lazy Susan holding a pair of glass, egg-shaped salt and pepper shakers and a wooden napkin holder with the word Ozarks and two birds branded into it, a memento from a long car trip Ruth and Carl had taken to a region Flora had never considered. Toto methodically sniffed around the perimeter of the big square space, likely titillated by lingering scents of Heidi, Carl’s hunting dog who had died of old age a year ago.
“How’s the painting coming?” Ruth had a drawl that made her sound Southern. It was contagious when in her presence. Whereas some women convened and got one another excited and talking faster – the proverbial hen party – the Devereaux sisters, if overheard by a stranger, could be mistaken for being from Virginia or some undefined rural locale. Flora was not a fast talker herself, but Ruth’s tempo was even slower, and for this reason, being with Ruth was relaxing. For another reason, which seems paradoxical given her speech cadence, Ruth worried about everything to the n-th degree, and though Flora herself was a worrywart, in juxtaposition to her anxious sister, she felt lackadaisical and could temporarily see the pointlessness of so much ado about things.
“The men came this morning at 8:45 and I hadn’t taken a bath yet, so I asked them to wait in the back yard. From now on, I can be out of their hair and they can come as early as they want and be as loud and coarse as they like all the livelong day,” said Flora, already eagerly settling into her stronger backbone persona that she played opposite Ruth. “I don’t even care how long it takes them.”
“Did you store your jewelry in a safe or anything?” asked Ruth, slowly but with underlying urgency.
“No,” said Flora. She had actually considered taking it to the safe deposit box at the bank, but it was too much to think about amidst her other preparations. She decided to leave it up to fate. She put her jewelry boxes in one of the bureau drawers, and if the painters were malevolent enough to steal anything, Flora would just cross that bridge when it rose up in front of her. Anyway, she tended to trust people and assumed that they, too, would prefer to avoid the required planning and the ensuing hassle. She thought fleetingly of her mother’s wedding ring and how upset and angry Ruth and Lillian would be if it were stolen because Flora had been too lazy and naïve to protect it, but she managed to let the thought go as quickly as it had come. This was the effect Ruth had on her. She preferred this insouciant façade – though it nearly felt authentic – to the way she usually felt which was tight and tense and some of the other words that Will stuck onto her.
She had long ago become accustomed to having people in their home unsupervised since they’d had someone come in to clean almost from the moment they had moved in, they being the first owners of the new split-level, four-bedroom, over a dozen years ago. One of the first stipulations Flora made, after the decision to stop working had been firmly made, was to stop employing Eleanor, the woman who cleaned the house every two weeks. The decree was meant to send one message to Will: if you are going to foolishly support me in this, you’ll be getting a housewife, and one to herself: you can’t possibly allow someone to clean your own home when you have nothing but time. But Will rejected the idea posthaste.
“You cannot manage this manse. You lack the stamina.”
She smirked. She would find it exhilarating and satisfying. She was determined. At the same time she couldn’t envision what she would be wearing while she vacuumed, scoured and dusted. Her slip, most likely. But barefoot? Perhaps completely nude.
He interrupted her reverie and, knowing that the ordering of his reasons would work like a charm, he closed the case with: “Think of it, sweet darling. Eleanor depends on this job. We can’t deprive her.” Eleanor had been working for the Roses for six years? Eight? Flora never took to her as she had to Freddy. Seeing Eleanor twice a month was a subtle indictment. Flora had no ability to raise a garden, but every woman should be able to clean her house, shouldn’t she? Her parents had never had a housekeeper. The three girls were pressed into service and they enjoyed it, dividing up and rotating the chores and feeling virtuous and hearty during and after. But Flora conceded to Will because it wasn’t a matter of an apologetic dis-employing and then farewell. Will could not let Eleanor go because she also cleaned his office and the offices of several other doctors in the medical building. She was a fixture. Will won out, of course, and now Flora felt even more ashamed and consciously arranged her schedule so she would not be home on Eleanor’s appointed cleaning day. If she didn’t have a lesson to teach, she would fill the time with errands or, occasionally, a matinee. She imagined Eleanor’s initial surprise and confusion upon seeing the master bedroom rearrangement and then privately blaming their patent marital troubles on Mrs. Rose. Naturally, she adored her employer, the charming and benevolent doctor.
Flora was often nostalgic for the house they had lived in throughout Abby’s childhood – a stone and clapboard bungalow surrounded by maples and neighbors of mixed income levels. In truth she might have preferred even more the postage stamp university apartment they had lived in for two years after they were married and before Abby was born, where Flora could walk to the river and dawdle in the numerous bookshops. She had managed and kept those homes without any handwringing. While they were figuring out where to move after Will stopped teaching – once he had handily achieved full professorship at the medical school he claimed to be content to rest on emeritus status and stop lecturing, at least in the classroom – Grace encouraged them to consider the tony enclave where she and Gordon were because would it be fun to be neighbors, but Will put the kibosh on that, deeming it a “wasp’s nest” populated by tightly-wound, humorless anti-Semites. Flora was secretly relieved as she would prefer not to be neighbors with Grace or with anyone else who might feel like making her home an extension of theirs. When they moved to Lawnmere – a neighborhood that introduced itself with a gilt-scripted sign at the entrance to the main road – Will had self-consciously feigned disdain for its wide streets and new construction, but Flora knew he enjoyed their increased square footage and visual status. He made it clear to anyone poised to ask (rarely did they), that the move was a practical one – to be near his office. But to anyone paying close attention (no one was), it was the opposite of practical. They were soon to be empty nesters and Will was even farther from the hospital where he often needed to get to in a hurry. Flora felt genuinely out of place, and it took her nearly a year to order new return address labels. She couldn’t reconcile it as the place where she would likely live for decades to come. She had warmed to it eventually, with the help of the plentiful tall oaks and the back yard garden, but it always felt slightly ill fitting. Hiring someone else to clean it had only hindered her acclimation.
“Where is Carl?” asked Flora, craning her head toward one of the two bedrooms whose doorways she could see from the kitchen, thinking he might be in there reading one of his heavy books about the war or silently watching a news debate program.
“Well, he’s at work, naturally. Did you forget the day?” asked Ruth who was now making a pot of coffee with her electric percolator, a device that Flora secretly abhorred.
She had forgotten the day. Just a few hours ago she was giving Will a perfunctory peck on the cheek as he went off to the office as well as his three day reprieve from her, she still in her housecoat, and flustered by the arrival of the painters. Of course it was a weekday. Carl was at his office, taking care of nebulous management business affairs, back in the very direction from which Flora had just driven. So the two were here alone which, even though Carl was the nicest man and very easy to be around, made Flora relax even more.
“Let’s go to Skaneateles for lunch!” Flora suggested, pitching it as an adventure. It was a 30-minute drive, two Finger Lakes away, but the big old hotel there was one of her favorite places to visit. It felt special and mature, matching the image she had of what her adult life would look like back when she was in her teens.
“My hair is a mess,” said Ruth, patting her perfectly fine-looking greyish-blonde do, the same non-color that Flora had and in the same neat but character-free style, short and somewhat curled. For both Flora and Ruth, their hair was not a defining feature the way it was for their older sister, Lillian, who was blessed with a very dark brown. Lillian continued to color it the same shade so that a grey hair had never seen the light of day on her head. Flora was certainly the most vain of the three sisters, but she channeled that energy into caring about her outfits rather than her hair. Still, Ruth fretted about how she looked, simply adding it to her list of worries, a guiding document without which she might be lost or mute.
“Stop it. You look fine. Don’t even change your clothes. That’s a beautiful color combination,” said Flora, gesturing in an authoritative way at her sister’s ensemble.
“I have to change. I was making up the bed and doing all sorts of things this morning, and I need something fresh. I wouldn’t want to wear slacks to the Sherwood either.”
“I won’t change if you won’t. And I drove all the way here in this,” said Flora opening her hands to emphasize and display her outfit which was not much different from Ruth’s except Flora’s slacks were burgundy, and her flowered blouse was of actual silk and had long sleeves and a larger, more abstract floral pattern in oranges and reds. And of course Flora wore heeled pumps, in oxblood.
“It’s not the 1950s, Ruth. We can wear pants.” Flora felt the influence of her daughter and her livid embrace of the women’s lib movement. Flora did not disagree with one thing that she had ever heard Gloria Steinem or any of her compatriots say, but she didn’t flaunt that fact. She maintained equanimity, even when she and Will watched the news and saw women parading around with ERA signs in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, when Will would raise his fist and say, “Sisterhood is powerful!” Nor when Abby pinned a button on Bea’s winter coat that said McGovern where the “O” was that primitive-looking symbol for woman. She wondered if Will or Abby wondered what Flora thought about everything that was going on. Did they assume she felt left out? That she was put off by strident feminists? That she didn’t even know what was going on? They never asked her, but she had a hunch that they sometimes acted as they did just to provoke her to reveal herself one way or the other. Why wouldn’t they just ask her? But they were not that kind of family. They operated in a realm made up of innuendo and willful ignorance and sleight-of-hand aggression. Each one of them in their own way. Flora’s way was the most subtle and therefore, she thought – often she felt secretly though pointlessly triumphant in this – the most insidious.
Flora must have found sleep eventually, because the alarm sounded at 5:15 and caused Flora to awaken theatrically. It was a vulgar, piercing beep that repeated only twice before mere luck allowed her to locate the snooze button to make it stop. Bea stirred and whined. Flora sat up and plotted for a few minutes, wondering how to rouse Bea without incurring more whining. She tiptoed to the eastern facing window, aided by the nightlight in the outlet underneath. The way the light entered the room through the window reminded her of her first married morning, when she’d recognized Will’s thoughtfulness for opening the one in the apartment bedroom before she was awake. Had she mistaken his motive? Was it just a morning ritual picked up from his Russian mother that had no relation to Flora’s particular happiness or wellbeing? Though it was far too late to do so, she retroactively wished for a husband who would forgo learned behaviors in favor of acknowledging his wife as she existed in the present.
Bea was gently snoring, on her back with her right arm thrown above her head. Flora took a chance and unilaterally cancelled the mission. Despite having fallen asleep by 10pm, Bea did not fully wake up until 7am, with a weak bar of sun across her comforter. Flora was in her bed, in the dim natural light, with her second cup of coffee, Toto nestled against her hip, with the folded crossword on her lap.
“You didn’t wake me up! We missed it!” Bea said, gesturing indignantly out the window, speaking in a croaking stage whisper. It did not escape Flora’s notice that Bea spoke more quietly since the post-zoo spanking incident. Bea had been angry and upset, naturally, and Will had apologized lavishly, profusely and, Flora had to be certain, sincerely for his violent outburst. Will had put his arm around Bea on the sofa in the living room and spoke to her quietly so that Flora, who was standing in the kitchen, held her breath in an effort to hear what he was saying, but she was unable to make out the words. At the end of it, she simply heard Bea say, meekly, “It’s okay, Grandpa.”
He had never before shown even a hint of a tendency toward physical violence. He never once struck Abby when she was younger, despite the fact that she had provoked both of her parents on numerous occasions. She would not even describe him as impatient. Or rather, impatience was seamlessly built into the machinery that propelled his constant high volume, pushing in all directions forcefully at all times. But that behavior was predictable and, while it could come across as threatening to the uninitiated, it was familiar and expected by everyone else. The idea that his granddaughter would actually be afraid, causing her to feel cautious and anxious around him, reignited her anger repeatedly every time she noticed this new conduct. Bea’s whining could certainly grate, but they both knew how fortunate they were to have a generally extremely well behaved and pleasant child who spent so much time in their home. If Will had been letting off steam about something unrelated that Bea had triggered, it was unthinkable to her that he had it in him to take it out on her, of all people. Flora wondered, somewhat dispassionately, if he had ever felt such urges toward her. But it seemed his verbal assaults were all the release he needed in her case.
Will had not apologized to Flora for the incident until he came home the next evening and saw the new bed arrangement. She was in the kitchen when he went upstairs to change his clothes, and she could hear his footsteps stop abruptly, pause for a few seconds and then proceed to his closet to hang up his jacket. When he came downstairs, the cocktails were ready and the lotus bowls were filled to the brim in the living room, but Flora was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window. Will sat down across from her and reached for her hands, and she let him take them as she looked at him, her face placid.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking directly at her for a long moment and with clear, sober eyes.
It was the briefest, truest, and possibly most intimate statement Flora had heard from him since he’d responded to Pastor Gerhard at their wedding, when his “I do” had provided a surge of faith that she hadn’t realized she’d needed.
“There will be plenty of other opportunities,” Flora reassured Bea. “We’ll plan it again soon. Today is a bit hazy anyway. It wouldn’t have been the best example. We want our first one to be just right.”
Chapter Twelve
There had been a period of time that Flora waded through wherein she felt unlike herself in ways she still could not articulate. If pressed to describe it, she would say there was an amorphous, tar-covered beast hovering just behind her. The visual idea was certainly conjured from some horror movie she had seen at some point, one that likely featured a glutinous, hideous, murderous monster. This creature would lurk nearby, looking at her – though it had no eyes, per se, since it didn’t inhabit any kind of recognizable being – in a threatening manner as if to say, “If you don’t pay attention, I will engulf you.” Though it was not as gruesome and dramatic as all that in its fruition, it was a way for her to assign something solid to the unnamable feeling.
This happened for about two months, shortly after President Kennedy was shot. She remembers it being in juxtaposition to that tragedy because she first explained for herself the appearance of the beast on that terrible event, and then, when the general public seemed to be going back to business as usual, she capitalized on it if anyone asked her why she looked glum or extraordinarily weary, and she would tell them, “Oh I think I’m just having a hard time bouncing back after the whole ordeal.” And they would seem to understand and nod solemnly. She felt some self-denigration in using this as an excuse, because she hated to think that people would see her as weak and sensitive or that she was somehow indicting them for being so insensitive as to be feeling back to normal. And poor Jackie. She truly was still reeling from it, no doubt, and it wasn’t fair of Flora to pretend to be. Flora wondered if Jackie had the beast threatening her, or possibly in the throes of engulfing her.
The beast began showing up often enough during this period that Flora would wake up in the morning and look for it first thing to assess whether or not it was going to be one of those days. For days on end it was, so anticipated and dependable, in fact, that it became a ritual. She had to check herself sometimes, to make sure it wasn’t just habit, that she wasn’t just used to seeing it – feeling it –and therefore going along on assumption. But even if she tried to ignore it or pretend it wasn’t present and accounted for, within the span of time it took her to reach the bathroom, she would have confirmation that it was not an illusion. The confirmation came in the form of a feeling that she was dragging a weight, as if the beast had one of its gooey tentacles around her ankle and was forcing her to drag it along. The realization that it was real, that it was in fact still around, made her feel even heavier so that she was sure she was walking bent over like an ancient person. But when she would get to the mirror in the bathroom, which reflected her from the waist up, she looked her usual self, albeit with puffy morning eyes.
She would pull herself through these days. She didn’t feel especially tired or even sad, but just – the only word that she could summon was “grey.” It seemed like an insufficient and lazy adjective, but it was as close as she could get to its character. Not only did she feel, and sometimes almost actually see, the dark blob loitering only a few maddening feet away, but the air seemed to hold a grey tincture. Even on a sunny day there was a scrim between her and everything else, like looking at a museum diorama through an aged, scuffed acrylic shield. She was numb and slow and it was the only time she recalls that her inner smoldering anger was nowhere to be found. The few moments that she could rise above herself and see that that regular part of her was missing in action, she felt a spark of relief and wondered if this was the better way to be. But when she imagined someone turning up the dimmer switch so that she could get a glimpse of the way life was before, tense and angry but with sharp contrast and bright colors, she had no doubt that that was the better way. Even though she could see it by imagining the light and colors, she couldn’t get fully back to it.
She went through motions and did what was necessary during her days, but without feeling anything – no annoyance or worry or impatience or overpopulation of thoughts. But still it was clear that the laundry list of things she was used to carrying around was still lighter than whatever this was. Those things – the dread of so-and-so’s imminent wedding; the dripping powder room faucet; owing a phone call to Grace; an overdue physical exam – could be ticked off and managed or at least acknowledged and assigned recognizable words. Not so with this. Some days during this period, she would sit on the edge of the bed in the evening and deliberately concentrate on things that seemed to be knocking from the inside of her skull, small things, things that would appear on the regular-life laundry list, and she would restack them in neat piles, as neat and manageable as actual laundry. She got to unintentionally calling this practice “making up her mind” as in the way one makes up a room. She would convince herself that it was just a matter of decluttering her head and realizing that the only thing troubling her was that she had a lot of things to attend to, and by looking at them and giving them a moment in the light, she would see they didn’t amount to much and that it was pointless to give them more than their due. It made her feel a little calmer, as she knew if she didn’t undertake that mundane sort of housecleaning, there was posilutely, absotively – as Will would say – no chance of her sleeping. Because in the dark and deep night, she knew that the list of stupid things would swirl around in her mind, latching themselves onto the bigger, darker thoughts – guilt about her relationship with Abby; remorse about her job which attached itself to resentment that her friends never seemed to feel guilty for not working, maybe because they never had held a job, which fueled more resentment at them and at her uncritical fidelity to the ethics of her family of origin; meaningless life; death – and get swallowed up by them, giving the larger thoughts fuel to grow so large that there was no room for anything else.
After several months of living with the beast, long enough so that Flora was growing accustomed and resigned to its inscrutable presence, she found one morning that it was gone. She poked and tested it, sitting on the edge of the bed, overemphasizing the burden of the task, and she couldn’t activate it. She felt light and impatient to get on with the day. The world did, indeed, look brighter. The problem, however, from that day nearly ten years ago until the present, was that she worried about its reappearance. And a few times since, not attached to any triggering events that she was aware of, she sensed its nearness. She sometimes thought the dread of its return might be worse than she remembered its presence actually being.
One of these times, she was in the car with Will driving to visit friends at the lake, an occasion for which she would be expected to be cheerful and chatty. It was a late sunny afternoon, and she was in the passenger’s seat holding a glass bowl of potato salad covered in tin foil. She had been quiet while Will prattled on about a new patient, a man who had intrusive thoughts about murdering his family while they slept, when she thought she noticed a cloud pass by the sun. But there were no clouds. She was instantly anxious, recalling the old feeling in a flash. She felt a flutter of panic in her throat. She told herself it was the cold glass bowl in her lap that was making her feel nauseous. But she was not convincing herself. She was mute. No, it can’t be. And not now, especially. Esther and Lou. She had to socialize and they were far from home. She felt like she had just been donned with a lead blanket. And that she might even want to cry. She told herself she was making something out of nothing, that it was just a tree or a sign that blocked the sun for a moment and the cold bowl pressing on her abdomen. She was making it worse with her fear.
They arrived at Esther and Lou’s and she steeled herself. She had faked cheer all those months back then, and she could eke it out today, too. They greeted their friends, went to sit on the deck overlooking the lake, and thanks to the exuberance of this particular couple, she was deprived of private thought for the next four hours. By the time she and Will were driving home in the dark, their friends’ talkativeness and good natures had left a pleasant glow on them so that they chattered amiably themselves for the entire hour ride back. Flora had forgotten the threat from earlier in the day.
She could not rest on her laurels, though, and go believing that the beast was slain, like it had just been gasping a few dying breaths. And in fact Flora did feel a sense of it, not when Will was in Vietnam which would have been logical and a proper story to use to explain herself to others if her behavior and demeanor was affected, but just after he returned. It was the morning after his late homecoming in the taxicab. They’d had a lovely reunion and she was so relieved to have him home safe, having genuinely missed him. She had been fully awake and fidgeting for hours waiting for his arrival and as soon as she got into bed with Will already snoring beside her, she fell asleep instantly, for the first time in years. She felt as if she had completed a great mounting accomplishment and her entire body was weary and relaxed and the sleep felt deserved beyond compare.
Will was not in the bed when she woke up, as it was already 8:00, an astonishing time for her to wake up, a full two hours later than her usual. Though she had gotten a considerable dose of rest, she could feel something, not the usual grey film or the proximity of the beast, but a heaviness that was all too familiar. “Dammit,” she said aloud. “Fuck off, you rat fink.” Then she laughed aloud. She remembered the first time she heard “fuck” in juxtaposition with “off,” and she had been delighted. It was out of the mouth of Alan Levy’s son, Steve, and he had used it to curse at a bee that was terrorizing him on the patio, where he and Abby sat. They didn’t know Flora was at the kitchen sink whose window was just half a story above them.
“Fuck off!” he shouted at the bee. Abby laughed. Flora laughed, but they couldn’t hear her. From that point on, whenever Flora had occasion to think, “fuck you,” the usual pairing, she now thought, “fuck off.” It might be that this was the first time she said it aloud. It felt like a talisman. The beast, if he was approaching, retreated.
She could draw no parallels between the first incident and the two almost-incidents. If she took the initiative to share it with Will, he would most certainly have offered a theory to explain it. His theory would somehow, she was sure, indicate something she was or wasn’t doing, instead of something that was happening to her.
After the post-assassination bout, while she may not have thought of the beast on a daily basis, she did move about the world cautiously, as though walking on a balance beam. If she wasn’t careful, she thought, she could fall. But what she was being careful of, she was not sure. It was related to reining in her thoughts and feelings, even more than she already did, to not let them take control. She honestly believed that if she let herself think what she really believed, that nearly everything in life was pointless, that the beam itself would fall away, and she would be in free fall to an uncertain demise. She knew exactly that feeling, because she had recurring dreams of being in her car, unable to reach the brake pedal and flying off a bridge or an abruptly ending highway, and she would wake with a pounding heart. So she buoyed herself not with cheerful thoughts, since that was not in her repertoire, but optimistic thoughts and a good deal of bootstrap denial. She would be fine and could walk tall and straight and most of the time make believe that everything was fine, or good enough. But she thought that perhaps her constant low-level fatigue was due to the relentless resistance against her true feelings – or, as she frequently maintained, the knowledge – and fear of losing the ability to stay on the beam.
As ritually as Will did his deep knee bends every night before retiring, his joints cracking with each dip, so Flora maintained the ritual of making up her mind when she got into bed, to seal off the gaps where the beast might slip in.
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Kathleen Collins’s nonfiction books include Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows, Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology, and a memoir, From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole: A Life with Television. Study in Hysteria is her first novel. She is a professor and librarian at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and lives with her husband near the forest in the northernmost tip of the New York City borough of Manhattan.
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