Breathing Water, page 17
The lasagna noodles were blackened and stiff. The cheese was brown at the edges and stringy. But the sauce was sweet. The lettuce and Swiss chard were greener than earth itself. I piled vegetables onto my plate, helped myself to seconds and thirds of the lasagna until I felt like I would burst through the seams of this delicate dress.
“Easy there, truck driver,” Devin said, handing me a paper towel to wipe the bright red sauce from my chin.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my mouth filled with his garden. “It’s so good.”
“I’m not much of a cook. Obviously. My mama and sisters never let me into the kitchen. I’m not sure how they expected me to woo a girl without learning how to cook.”
I felt woo like a thousand butterfly kisses on my bare arms. I looked at him, waiting to hear it again. He rested his elbows on the edge of the table and looked at me.
“You grew up in Virginia?” I asked.
“Um-hum. Until I was thirteen. Then we had to move to the city because my dad got a job working for the Smithsonian. He’s a preparator.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s sort of like a curator’s assistant. The curator makes the plans, and the preparator puts the displays together.”
I thought of the Quimby museum with its ancient displays and untended artifacts.
“What does your mother do?” I asked. I had stopped eating. Suddenly full, sated.
“She’s a mom. Seven children,” he said. “I was number two.”
“Wow. My mother almost went crazy just raising me and Colette,” I said. I folded up my soiled paper towel and laid it across my plate. “She had to come up here sometimes to get away from us. Even in the middle of winter, she’d drive up here. I remember I loved that. It was like a vacation for us too. My dad would play Mom for a week. He’d let us do all sorts of stuff Mom wouldn’t. Like sledding on the garage roof. Eating dinner at midnight. Skipping school to go ice skating.” I hadn’t thought about my mother’s vacations for years.
“My mama should have had a lake of her own,” Devin said, pouring me another glass of wine. “Maybe her own ocean.”
“Are you close to your brothers and sisters?”
“Yeh.” He nodded.
I thought about Colette, about how much I wanted to adore her, to look up to her. But she had ruined that for me a long time ago.
I was a bit drunk when I walked away from the Hansel and Gretel house, thinking I should have brought breadcrumbs to find my way back home. I carried the enormous shoes, and stepped carefully to avoid the sharp pebbles and stones lurking in the darkness. When I got back to the camp, I lay down on the daybed and stared at the ceiling. I felt so full I was ready to hibernate. I could sleep and sleep and sleep with all that was inside of me at that moment.
Maggie and Alice came with me to the library to return the mountain of books that had been accumulating at Magoo’s bedside. He was strong enough now to make himself breakfast (to slice peaches, to pour the thin skim milk his doctor has mandated), but he still needed me to make the trips into town for his weekly fix of history. Today the load was particularly burdensome: World War I and World War II. Alice pulled most of the books in her Radio Flyer wagon, along with every baby doll she owned, while Maggie and I struggled with our own armloads. We must have looked like a strange parade walking down Main Street on this hot hazy summer afternoon.
The clack clack of Alice’s cowboy boots stopped at the steps to the library. She relinquished the wagon to Maggie, who slowly dragged it up the steps. She was red and wheezing by the time we got to the door. Mrs. LaCroix, the Wednesday / Thursday librarian, greeted us at the heavy wooden door.
“Mr. Tucker certainly has you working,” she said. She took the wagon handle and pulled it to the front desk. Her hips probably used to sway, I thought. But now they were lumpy under the stretched polyester roses of her dress, and she waddled away from us, chattering all the while. As she started to lift the books out of the wagon, Alice tended to her dolls, smoothing synthetic curls, peeking into the backs of imaginary diapers.
“Would you mind doing me a favor?” Mrs. LaCroix asked.
“Not at all,” I said and rested my own books on the counter.
“My Aunt Bethany lives up to the lake. She doesn’t come into town much, but she loves the books on tape. Cataracts.” She shook her head. “Would you mind dropping some off to her house?”
“No problem,” I said. “Which camp does she live in?”
“You know where the Foresters used to live?”
I nodded.
“Next camp down. The one with the dwarves out front.”
I thought of the eyesore that Gussy complained about each and every summer. The yard looked more and more like a miniature golf course than a yard: lawn jockeys, devilish dwarves, elaborate butterflies stuck to the house midflight.
“I know the one.” I smiled. “I’ll drop them off on my way home.”
Maggie had found a seat at one of the long wooden tables near the cold fireplace. In the winter, when I was a child, Grampa would bring me to the library on days that school was canceled because of too much ice and snow, and I would sit on the floor in front of the fire until my cheeks glowed red as embers while he wandered through the rows and rows of books.
“Whatcha reading?” I asked. She had one of the enormous ancient yellow newspapers spread out like a map in front of her.
“Things were easier then, you know? I mean, look.” She motioned to one of the old-fashioned ads. “Hair cream, whatever that is, thirteen cents. This girdle thing is only a buck.”
“It looks cruel,” I said, staring at the illustrated woman smiling despite the contraption turning her body into an hourglass, or a dumbbell.
“Look what the headline is,” she said. “‘Quimby to Hold First Annual Fourth of July Parade.’ Damn. When was the last time you saw something like that?”
“I guess bad things didn’t happen so much then,” I said, sitting down next to her at the table. “Either that or nobody wanted to read about them.”
“Bugs called last night,” Maggie said, closing the paper and looking at me.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“He wants to see Alice,” she said.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said over my dead and rotting body.”
“Good. Where is he?”
“Still in Florida somewhere, I imagine,” Maggie said. She smoothed the crinkly paper down flat, her fingers stopping at the woman’s small waist. Her careful nail polish had chipped away a little, leaving her pink nails exposed. I felt like I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to. “Where’s Alice?” she asked.
We found Alice sitting in a purple beanbag chair in the children’s room. Her baby dolls were tucked around her, and she was holding a book close to her face. I could see her lips moving silently as she read.
“Hey, baby,” Maggie said, dragging a big orange beanbag chair from across the room, putting it next to her chair.
“I’ve got to get some books for Magoo,” I said.
Maggie sunk into the chair and leaned her head back. As Alice continued reading, Maggie stroked her hair.
I loved that there was still a card catalog in this library. I pulled the long drawer out and looked for the books that Magoo had requested. Each card had been typed, the letters not always even or clear. I imagined the person who organized things here. I imagined her sore back and eyes straining in the dim light of the library. I imagined the way the metal keys must have felt under her fingers and the quick rhythms of typing.
After I had scratched down the call numbers with the stubby yellow pencil tied to the card catalog with a string, I browsed through the catalog for something to bring Devin. I found Magoo’s books easily. The library’s history shelves were as familiar to me now as my grandfather’s. I had to search a little for a book for Devin. I wanted to find something perfect. Finally I found one in the shelves for oversized books. I knelt down, the bare skin of my knees pressing into the ornate black grate in the floor.
The photos inside were deceiving. At first, the rooms didn’t look out of the ordinary at all. Kitchens with gingham curtains, loaves of bread on wooden cutting boards. Beds with lace canopies and books tossed carelessly on blue nightstands. But then, in the corner, you could see the giant’s hand, reaching in toward the Christmas tree laced with tiny white candles. Miniature palaces with marble floors and chandeliers with pinpricks of light. I thought about his boxes, the small worlds inside.
I carried the books to Mrs. LaCroix. She stamped each book, and I signed the dog-eared card. No computer magnets or anonymity. The list of names on the sign-out card revealed the books’ histories, the names of the hands that had held them were there for anyone to see in careful cursive.
I found Maggie and Alice in their respective beanbag chairs, both asleep. I sat down with my books and read three paragraphs about Alexander Hamilton before my eyes grew heavy too.
I dropped Maggie and Alice and the Radio Flyer full of babies off at Maggie’s house and headed around to the other side of the lake to drop off the tapes with Mrs. LaCroix’s aunt. I pulled into the driveway and noticed for the first time that the yard was not only littered with inanimate plastic critters, but with live and frantic chickens as well. I closed the door to the Bug loudly to let Mrs. LaCroix’s aunt know that I was there.
I walked tentatively toward the camp, watching my feet so that I didn’t step on any of the squawking birds. I knocked on the screen door, which was hanging by one rusty hinge. The storm door was shut tightly, curtains drawn.
“Who is it?” A voice cracked loudly, startling me.
“It’s Effie Greer.” I struggled to remember Mrs. LaCroix’s first name. “Evelyn, your niece, asked me to stop by with some books on tape from the library.”
“Evelyn?”
“No, this is Effie Greer. Gussy McInnes’s granddaughter.” I stepped back from the door. A chicken ruffled its feathers at my audacity.
“Don’t know her,” the voice said definitively.
“Evelyn, your niece, sent me with books on tape for you. From the library.”
“Books on tape?” The door opened slowly. “You got Grisham?”
“I do.” I smiled at the sliver of a face behind the door. “His newest one.”
She opened the door and looked toward me suspiciously. Her eyes were milky, like a newborn kitten’s instead of a woman’s. Her hair was wrapped up in elaborate silver braids. She was wearing a loose green floral housedress and leather men’s shoes with nylon stockings.
“Well, come in then,” she said angrily and motioned vaguely to the center of the kitchen.
I walked into the kitchen, following her slow and blind lead. Immediately, I recoiled at the smell and sight of the kitchen. There were cats everywhere, crawling across the filthy countertops, crouching in the corners retching and scratching. I covered my mouth with my hand and squeezed my eyes shut against the ammonia smell.
“You want something to drink?” she asked, shuffling toward an old refrigerator.
“No,” I said. “I really need to be going. I’m dropping some books at Mr. Tucker’s place as well.”
“Blind as a bat, that Tucker.” She laughed and opened the refrigerator door. The light was out.
“It was nice meeting you.” I stumbled, realizing that I had no idea what her name was.
“Mrs. Olsen,” she answered me, turning on her heel. “Can you help me with something before you go?”
“Sure,” I said, trying hard not to gag as a dingy white cat retched in the corner.
She reached for me with a thin cold hand riddled with liver spots and touched my bare shoulder. She was waiting for me to lead her now.
“In the living room is my tape recorder.”
I walked in front of her through her house, looking for what might be the living room. I stopped when I saw a battered couch and a coffee table with a bouquet of dusty plastic tulips in the center. She eased herself down onto the couch and motioned toward an end table where I found a bulky tape recorder with sticky buttons.
“Can you put it in please?” she asked, reaching for a nylon stocking that had slipped like transparent skin down to her ankle.
I slipped the cassette into the tape deck and listened as the story began. I sat with her until the voice on the tape became part of the room, as at home in this dirty room as the cat gently purring beneath her fingers and the giant fan in the window spinning the stench of all these cats. I sat with her, waiting for her to motion again for me to leave. I waited for her to become lost in the story before I slowly left the room and went back into the yard filled with chickens and futile ornaments.
As I opened the door to the car, she poked her head out the window and said, “I’ll be done with these by next Wednesday.”
“I’ll see you next week then, Mrs. Olsen.”
“Do you know Mrs. Olsen?” I asked Gussy and Magoo as Magoo double-checked to make sure I had gotten all of his books.
“Bethany?” Magoo asked. “Sure. Crazy old bat.”
“Tucker,” Gussy reprimanded.
“I brought her some tapes from the library today.”
“That’s sweet, honey,” Gussy said. “Evelyn ask you?”
I nodded. “Why do you say she’s crazy, Tuck?”
“Killed her husband.”
“Shush,” Gussy said, gently hitting his arm. “Everyone knows it was a heart attack.”
“She killed her husband?” I asked in disbelief.
“Effie, really. It’s ancient history. And it was a heart attack.” Gussy stood over Magoo’s sink as comfortable as if it were her own, peeling carrots. She can do this, make a home in anyone’s kitchen.
“Rat poison,” Magoo insisted. “Arsenic. Put it in his tea.”
“Why?” I asked. Gussy stopped peeling, frowned at us both, and then resumed peeling the thin slivers of orange.
“He was a lady’s man. Had six or seven girlfriends from what I understand. Of course, they were the girls that nobody else wanted or knew what to do with, but he didn’t seem to mind. One for every day of the week. One of each: blonde, brunette, redhead, fat, skinny, short, and tall. Story goes that when Bethany lost her sight—it happened real quick, when she was only forty or so—that he started bringing them around the house, right up underneath her nose.”
“I’m sure she couldn’t have smelled them in that house.” I laughed.
“Story is that he’d invite them to dinner, dinner that Bethany spent all day making, let them sit on his lap the whole time. It was like a game to him or somethin’. Your grampa used to deliver the paper there. He always showed up around dinnertime with the Olsens’ paper. Anyways, one night Mr. Olsen brings over his Tuesday girl, what was her name, Gussy?” Magoo scratched his head and Gussy shook hers. “Doesn’t matter. She was the short redhead. Terrible skin, I remember.
“So, he brings her to the house, and she’s not so bright and she thinks that Bethany is deaf too and sits there on Olsen’s lap during dinner, giggling. He keeps trying to shut her up, putting his hand over her mouth, whispering in her ear.
“That’s when Bethany does it. Stares right at the girl as she pours her husband a cup of tea. Doesn’t spill a drop.”
“What did the girl do?” I asked.
“Some say she was so spooked just by that that she ran out of the house before he keeled over. But your grampa told me that she stayed there on his lap, his hand halfway up her skirt when he started to pitch—”
“Enough, Tucker,” Gussy said, slamming down the peeler.
“That the rigor mortis set in and she couldn’t get her panties loose from his fingers.”
I started to laugh, and Magoo shrugged. “That’s what your grampa told me, anyway.”
Gussy grinned a little and handed me a peeler from the drawer. “Help me out here, Effie.”
“Here is little Effie’s head, whose brains are made of gingerbread.” Magoo smiled, lighting his pipe.
Before Grampa died, he used to read me an e.e. cummings poem, tapping his fingers gently on my head, “. . . God will find six crumbs. . . .”
Devin came for me just as the sun had gone down. I hadn’t been to the drive-in since I was in high school. I didn’t think it was even open anymore, but Devin showed me the newspaper advertising the double feature: two movies I didn’t recognize the names of.
He came to the door as I was pouring the hot popcorn into a brown paper grocery bag. The metal foil from the popper was hot on my fingers. “Ow!”
“Need some help?” he asked, as I struggled to shake the burn away.
He held open the bag and I managed to get all of the popped kernels in without burning myself again. “Thanks,” I said. “Is it cold outside?”
“Um-hum.” He nodded. He was wearing a thick corduroy barn jacket the color of chocolate. The inside was lined with flannel.
“Let me get some warm clothes,” I said. I went to the closet to look for something warm to wear. All I could find was Grampa’s black wool coat. I found a pair of gray mittens and a moth-eaten scarf. “July, huh?”
“You got any boots in there?”
“Shush,” I said and threw the coat over my shoulders.
“Ready?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded.
In the truck, he pulled his pipe out of one of his deep pockets. “Do you mind?” he asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t tell him the way the thick sweet smell of his pipe made me dizzy with remembrance and longing. I leaned my head back when he lit the pipe and puffed. When he rolled his window down and the smoke escaped, my heart plunged just a bit.
The sign for the Moonlight Drive-In Theatre was the original one, from a time when girls swooned and boys’ hair was thick and hopeful with grease. Thigh-high weeds sprouted up through the entrance. We paid the bored teenage girl in the fluorescent booth and drove into the empty lot. It looked like a graveyard, the microphone stands like silent silver monuments.
“Where do you want to park?” he asked, scanning the rows seriously.
