“Oh, all right, maybe I will.”
“Say you will for sure. Tonight!”
“But we’re going out again tonight. For Italian food.”
“All the better,” Flo says. “Do it tonight. After he drops you off at home, wait an hour and then call him and say what you told me. He will like it, I promise you. Who doesn’t like a romantic adventure? Don’t think beyond it, don’t think what it means or will mean, just do it because it’s fun. And then tell me what happens tomorrow, will you do that?” Flo’s heart has begun beating like a jackrabbit’s. She’d better calm down. She’d betterliedown. She leans forward and touches Teresa’s hand. It’s such a small hand. She says, “Now look, Teresa, I hate to play this card, but it might be an old lady’s last wish.” She starts coughing, as fake as can be, and Teresa laughs.
“Iwouldlook upon it as a favor,” Flo says, and Teresa says, “Oh, all right, I’ll do it, but I’m only going to show him the stars and not say anything else; those words I imagined him saying, that was just a flight of fancy. It’s way too soon to think either one of us is anywhere near to saying such a thing.”
“Oh?” Flo says. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’ll do what I said,” Teresa says, and Flo knows she will do it, too. She’s one of those who if she says she’ll do it, no matter what it is, she’ll do it. There aren’t a lot of people like that. And she doesn’t have to say any romantic words when she takes that fellow out into the night. The stars will talk for her.
After Flo comes into the house, she rests on the sofa before she goes upstairs. Satisfaction lies within her like a curled-up cat, but Lordy, she’s tired. She closes her eyes and thinks about Teresa and the cashier. She hopes Teresa stops being so scared; that’s all it is, she is plum scared to risk having certain feelings. But Flo hopes Teresa can tell that new man a tender thought or two and that he’ll hold them like he would a newborn.
You know, Ruthie, there are times in a woman’s life when she looks at her frying pan sideways with her arms crossed. Sometimes when that feeling came over me Terrence and I would go out, maybe he would even just take us over to McDonald’s, and it always felt like a treat. I never was one for: It has to be white tablecloths and a straight-backed waiter reciting the specials like highfalutin poetry. No, I got right nervous in such places all my life and not because I came up poor. It was something else, like people all pretending something and I did not want to pretend along with them. For shame, Flo, Terrence used to say. These people are just coming out to eat and the restaurant is trying to make it special. There’s nothing wrong with that. I would tell him he was right because he was. But a person just can’t help having those chafey feelings sometimes.
I have been doing so well lately I wonder if I will live a lot longer than that doctor thought. But I am leaving this letter which I now call War and Peace on the kitchen table just in case. I reckon I could have just called you and told you I’m leaving you my house and all my things. But I’m aiming for a surprise. I don’t know why. Well, maybe I do. Who doesn’t like surprises when it means you’re getting something interesting from someone who loves you.
I want to tell you about the rubber band I mentioned a while back, what it means to me and why I kept it. It’s in the top left kitchen drawer in a little white box with a red ribbontied around it, you’ll find it. Now, I have advertised this like it was the Second Coming and I hope you won’t be disappointed with the story. I hope you won’t stand with one hand on your hip saying well for Pete’s sake.
Here goes.
One time Terrence and I were in a contemplative mood, sitting at the kitchen table. I was right where I am now and Terrence was sitting where there is an empty chair, always an empty chair now, though I am not shy to say I do see him there sometimes, his shirt open at the collar and his sleeves rolled up and his beautiful big hands clasped together. Sitting there smiling at me. Sometimes he is see-through and sometimes he is not. Sometimes he’s just so real. And at those times I can near about smell his aftershave, I believe he’s calling me to him.
But the rubber band. Terrence and I were newly married, he had just come back from the war, and I had caught a case of the insecures. I kept thinking terrible thoughts like what if his love dies, what if we get in such a terrible fight there is no repairing it and we go down in bitterness. I loved him then in a kind of desperate way. I felt like I needed to walk behind him with my hand on his belt lest he get away. He was my most precious thing, and I was scared to death he’d leave again and I’d lose him. I couldn’t talk to Terrence about this; I didn’t know where these feelings were coming from, although later, I saw that somehow I must have known something.
One Sunday afternoon we’d just come back from church, and we were having a cup of coffee at this kitchen table and I busted out crying. Why sweetheart, what is wrong? he asked. I didn’t answer and he came around to my side of the table andgot on his knees like he was proposing (like he was supposed to do the first time around). I commenced to blubbering harder. And bless his heart he just stayed quiet and kneeling even though I’d plum forgot to sweep the kitchen floor the night before. Finally, I managed to tell him a bit of what was in my heart, that we might come apart somehow. Hm, he said, and he got up and he went into the drawer where we kept our rubber bands. He pulled one out and brought it to the table and laid it before me and my splotchy face. See this? he asked, pointing to it. Yes, I said. Watch, he said, and he pulled that rubber band out so far his hands were trembling and I feared it would bust. See that? he said, and I said yes. Then he lowered that stretched-out rubber band to the floor and let it go. And of course it snapped right back into place. Terrence picked it up and held it in his hand before me. What do you see now? he asked. I said I saw a rubber band. But what has happened to it? he asked like he was Mr. Wizard. I said, Well, it has gone back to its shape. Right, he said, and that is what we will always do. You can never do anything that will undo my love for you. We will have fights, and I suspect we might call each other names and maybe sometimes we will have private regrets. But always we will come back to our original shape, which is that I love you. Period. Always we will come back to that. I know it and I think you know it too. Let us accept that there will be problems but never mind, human minds and hearts and souls are resilient. He looked at his watch and he said, And now I suggest we stop talking about all this doom and gloom and get on over to Miss Lee’s Café before they run out of meatloaf.
I’ll be ready in just a minute, I said. I spect he figured Ihad to piddle or was putting on my lipstick, in those days you didn’t hardly take out the trash without wearing lipstick. And I did put on some lipstick in a lovely red shade but then I did what I really wanted which was to put that rubber band Terrence had used for his demonstration into a little white box. I put it in there like its own little house and then I tied a red ribbon on it. And when times of trouble came between us all I had to do was look at that box and trust would come again to my heart. You’ll see the box there, Ruthie. I can’t hardly think it will be worth keeping. But the story might tie itself up in red ribbon and live on in you.
That Terrence. I’ll tell you, his love was light as a feather and heavy as an anvil both at the same time, love can be like that, and my dear dear Ruthie I hope it was like that for you and Jonathan and if it was I truly believe you can find it again. Things change shape, and then they can go back. They can.
“Oh, hell’s bells,” Flo mutters, sitting up at the side of her bed. It’s 4:50a.m. and it’s been a restless night, her tossing and turning from side to side and lying wide-eyed on her back all exasperated and staring up at the ceiling as though she were begging it to help her.
She turns on the nightstand lamp, slides into her slippers, and creeps quietly down into the kitchen, though why she is being so quiet she has no idea. She could do the Tarzan yell and nobody would know. But it’s habit, to be quiet getting up in the night. Same as she still sleeps on her side of the bed, and the same as she sometimes reaches over as if Terrence might be there. One time she really thought hewasthere, but it was just how longing can take a shape sometimes.
She pulls on a cardigan she left on the back of a kitchen chair. It’s an old gray one with leather buttons that belonged to her father, and she wonders if she should tell Ruthie about it—how whenever she puts it on she sees him beckoning to her to come sit on his lap and listen to the ballgame on the radio with him. Maybe not. There’s so much else to tell her about, and Flo is beginning to feel that she’d better get moving and finish this letter. For one quick second, she wonders if this whole enterprise isn’t futile, if all it will do is make Ruthie feel tired and overburdened. But then she is right back to believing she should do it—shemustdo it. Not only for Ruthie, but for herself. An autobiography inthings, that’s what this letteris.
She starts to turn on the overhead, but her spirit isfeeling too delicate for an overhead just yet. Instead, she makes coffee by the light of the moon.
She sits at the table with her hands folded as the coffee finishes perking, then pours some into her Mrs. Hen mug and goes out to sit on the front porch to watch the day crack open. She once had a friend say that nothing good happens after dark. “Nothing??” Flo had asked, teasing her; they were young then, and rambunctious with their husbands at night. The friend—Connie was her name—waved her hand, and then she leaned forward and said something Flo has never forgotten. She said, “I’m just talking about all the good stuff that happens in the day, thelifeall around you: bumblebees, and children off to school and people working at all kinds of things. People going and coming, all day long, and I always wonder what all they’redoing.” She looked at Flo then, with a kind of shyness Flo had not seen in her before, and she asked, “Do you do that, Flo, do you watch people like that?” Flo said, “I am too busy working to do that.” And then Connie kind of tucked herself back in and Flo felt ashamed. People, when they tell you certain things, they want you to agree. They want you at least to see what they mean, in your heart. That was a time she had failed a friend.
Flo watches the sky turn pink, then apricot, then yellow, and finally blue. She watches as the papers get flung onto porches and she listens to the sleepy birds commence their daily symphony. She sees a man carrying a briefcase going out to his car: there is the muted thunk of the door closing, the stuttering sound of the engine starting, and the whine of reverse. Whoever the man is drives past Flo and waves hello, and she waves back. Terrence told her once about alanguage where there is no word for “hello.” Rather, people greet each other by saying, “You are here.” And the response is “Yes, I am.” And in another language Flo had heard about—in Africa, she thinks—people don’t say, on parting, “I’ll see you.” They say, “Somehow.”
Flo doesn’t know why remembering this now brings tears to her eyes. Well, yes, she does.Somehowis a wish made without being able to know whether or not it can come true. It is determination in the face of uncertainty.
Down the block, a light goes on upstairs, then downstairs. Flo sips at her coffee and she thinks, I ought to have followed the sun all my life: wake up when it rises, lie down when it sets. It seems like such a good idea now, if not exactly practical. Or doable, really. It’s just wishful thinking, an idea come too late. Or an idea like people get all the time, ideas that do not come to fruition because people mostly return to their habits, good or bad. But this day of noticing? This is for Connie. Rest her soul.
Ruthie, I want to thank you for giving me a job, that being all I’m telling you about my life. I have enjoyed telling you about certain things but mostly I have enjoyed revisiting memories like I’m watching home movies again, the film whirring along, the images shown on a sheet hung up in a darkened living room. I hadn’t counted on remembering all these things, but I’m glad I did.
I realize I’m leaving you a lot to read through and I hope you won’t be mad. I don’t think you will. I do hope you’re able to use some of my things, maybe something that will make you remember being a little girl becoming good friends with your neighbor, Flo. I believe you were eight years old when you asked if I wanted to be blood sisters with you, and didn’t we prick our fingers and doit.
I just got a picture in my head of your being here in this house after I’m gone, wearing nice slacks and a pretty blouse and your hair in a ponytail. A somber expression as you go rooting through the drawers, and maybe you’ll be a little flustered, but tell you what, you just quick take what you want and then call those fellers who take away junk. Then you can sell the house and that will be fine. I won’t know WHAT you do so don’t you worry about me. I won’t know what you do unless there’s an afterlife where I would be like an angel floating above you, and if I were an angel I sure wouldn’t be making judgments or getting fussy about what you do with myhouse. No, I think I would have a pulled-back kind of mind at that point.
But look at me wandering off as usual. Let us get down to business.
You once were playing Rich Lady and I made you some lemonade and put it in one of those beautiful crystal glasses that are in a box in the basement. Seems like nobody wants such things anymore, problems with where to store them, and they seem fussy, I suppose. But I hope you’ll just look at the etchings on them again, and see how pretty they are. You seemed to like it when we used one that day. And I remember I cut crusts off your peanut butter sandwich, and you sat straight as a board wearing your tutu and a striped t-shirt that you’d slid off your shoulders to be your strapless gown. You had a pair of my high heels over your socks, and you had on my jewelry, too, all you could fit on yourself. I remember you had on my blue rhinestone earrings and that wasn’t enough so you clipped the red and white polka dot earrings onto your glasses. You were done up and I took a picture of you I still have, you might find it in one of my albums and offer it to your children. Oh, what children’s joyful freedom can do for us, seems like a parched lawn being watered, being around them sometimes. And you in particular, Miss Ruthie, you always had something going, I didn’t ever know what you would have in your wagon, one time you were peddling rocks and you sure enough sold some, some were agates and right pretty. I myself bought one for thirty cents and it’s still in my nightstand drawer. You’ll findit.
