Teresa looks at her watch and says she’d best be going, she has to visit some more clients.
“Hold on,” Flo says, and she gets up and goes into her bathroom for her rosewater bathing solution. When she returns to the porch, a little out of breath, she hands the bottle to Teresa. “Here,” she says, “you take a bath in this before you put on your chili clothes.” She plops back down in her chair.
“This is brand new!” Teresa says, and Flo says, “I have more. Now, listen to me: if you take a bath in this he will be crazed by desire.”
“Ha ha,” Teresa says, but she is all serious.
“Ha ha,” Flo says back, just as serious.
Teresa starts down the steps, but then she turns around. “Can I come and see you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here,” Flo says, and hopes it’s true.
She stares out at the street, but she doesn’t see it. She sees instead the bluebonnets she grew up with in Texas, the piercing beauty of them. She sees the breeze moving through willow trees like it’s combing the trees’ hair. She hears her mother calling her home; her mother used to stand out on the back stoop and bang her wooden spoon against a saucepan, and didn’t Flo come a-running like there’d be something new when she got there. There was never anything new. Only a bath with the floating Ivory and then clean pajamas, same as always. Still, the call to home. The turning back of bedclothes to receive a tired body, that last letting gobefore sleep. She wonders if there’s anyone else who feels a communion of spirit as they are drifting off, if anyone else feels what you might call apresencehelping to persuade you into rest. Not that Flo ever needed much persuasion. She has always gone gladly into sleep, for the promise of the new day.
It’s funny, Flo thinks. All of us waking up every morning ignorant of all that may befall us. Befall or enrich or enlighten or who knows what. It’s no surprise to her that especially as she got older she began to feel more acutely the need to be careful. As if you could control anything. Life was a bucking bronco. If you got on to ride, you took your chances.
She thinks about Teresa getting ready to go to Jim’s house for dinner, and she hopes with all her heart that it goes well. She wants so much for Teresa to understand that the love in the world is forher,too. She wishes she could give her a kind of confidence she doesn’t think Teresa has ever had; she wishes she couldgiveher that, same as handing over a plate full of food:Here.Takeit.
So much of a person’s life can be bound up with trying to get things, when it turns out that the best thing isgiving,and Flo doesn’t think she did enough of that in her life. Sometimes it was just pure laziness, sometimes ignorance, but mostly, she realizes now, it was a kind of doubt that sheshouldgive something: a gift, kind words, an offer to help. What if that help wasn’t wanted? What if she was seen as interfering? What a foolish fear! She wishes more than anything else that in these last days she can give something. Yougot to give. It’s like miniature stars thrown over your shoulder: little pieces of light that can land and change the atmosphere, even if you don’t see it happen. You got to try. She wishes she had been bolder in this life. Maybe she should have on her tombstone:Here lies a shy woman ever in love with the world. She should have shown it more.
On my closet shelf, on the right-hand side, is a green canvas gift box of three small albums labeled Dreams, Journeys, and Travel that I never did put any pictures or anything else in. It’s just all tied up and waiting like the day I got it at some thrift store, and do you know the person who had it before me left it empty, too. When I bought it I thought, I’m going to fill those albums up, but then it seemed like I wanted to imagine things that might be put in there more than doing them. It’s like when you have a dream and it’s like a sparkly floating evening gown but then you write it down and it becomes a faded housedress on a wire hanger. So I would look at the album labeled Dreams and I’d sure enough feel dreamy unto magical. I would look at Journeys and think about how a person gets from here to there, like a friend of mine who was scared of even going to the Piggly Wiggly and then she up and moved to Positano, Italy. She used to talk about Positano, Italy, she used to say that if she could ever work up the courage to travel she would go there. She had pictures of it that she looked at over and over. It looked like a place you’d make up but it was sure enough real. But she moved there! By herself! She sent me a postcard saying I DID IT and that was the last I heard from her. Whenever I thought of her, I was filled with wonder and a fair amount of envy. Fact, one time Terrence came out and I was sitting on the back porch with my apron on, my hands folded in my lap. He asked what I was doing and I said, “Nothing, butI was wondering what makes for the way your life goes.” It was too big a question to ask Terrence, we were fixing to eat dinner in a few minutes, I remember I had made chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and green beans right out of the garden. And I thought maybe I’d talk to Terrence later about my big question but it faded away. We both liked chicken-fried steak so much we were content to eat it in silence and then watch Ed Sullivan. My question didn’t matter anymore, it slipped right through the colander.
Now, in my bottom dresser drawer, next to your letters all bundled up, you will find something embarrassing. It is an empty Mrs. Butterworth and an empty honey container in the shape of a bear. Terrence and I were having breakfast one day and the honey and the syrup were on the table, and I started talking like I was Mrs. Butterworth and Terrence started talking like he was Mr. Bear. And do you know we said things that we never would have said otherwise, fanciful things, funny things, things I’d just flat out call dear. And seemed like we needed those props to say those things, so I washed out the containers and whenever I needed a special talk with Terrence, why, I’d haul them out. I’d put on my Mrs. Butterworth voice and say, “Dear?” And here would come his gruff bear voice saying, “What is it, my little plumpling?” It was just silly stuff, Ruthie, the kind of thing that we’d never want to admit we did, but we relished our play time, seems like people might never outgrow that need for play to lift them up and away for a bit. After Terrence died, I came home to an empty house that was changed forevermore, the air so heavy around me it was like a coat. And I took off my black hat and my black shoes and I started to take off my black dress but then I kept it on. I wentto the dresser drawer and knelt before it, and I pulled out Mrs. Butterworth and Mr. Bear. And then I asked Mr. Bear where he was and there was a long silence, of course. But just when I was going to put the things away, there came a touch to my cheek, I believe it was real, Ruthie, a touch to my cheek, and I felt the promise in it that I would be with him again. And when I took off my black dress and put it on the hanger, it slid off and onto the floor. Terrence never did like me in black.
Oh, here’s something that might surprise you, Ruthie. I got brass knuckles in my nightstand. I got them after I started living alone. I figured the bad man would break in and I would hold them up and say, Don’t make me use these. And he would bust out laughing so hard he would lose his menace and maybe I’d fix him some coffee and tell him to mend his ways. And maybe he would.
There’s a footprint in concrete round back by the cellar door that I want to call your attention to. Terrence stepped in wet concrete by mistake and didn’t he have a fit, seeing as how he messed up the job someone had just finished. Finished and warned us not to step in. But here came Terrence out to inspect the man’s work right after he left. A man may not know a single thing about how to do something, but when a skilled workman does it for him, why, here he will come to inspect it afterward. Well, Terrence was bending over to have a good look and he slipped on wet grass and there was his footprint smack dab in the slab. We thought about calling the man back to fix it, but it would have cost too much so I said let’s just call it a happy accident, there you will be long after you’re gone. Those were the days neither of us believed we would ever be gone, not really. But there’s that Terrence footprint. After hedied, I would sometimes lay flowers in it. And I would see him all over again with his foot slid in the concrete, flustered and angry but laughing, too. His hands on his hips, staring over at me in his “Dang it!” way.
Let’s see what else. On a table in my living room is a pretty blue bowl and in it are little rocks that you presented me with one day saying they were magic beans. Go ahead and wish on them, you said, and I did. Not only then, but most every day, it made me feel good. On the same table, there’s a note in a frame where the print has faded so you can hardly read it but it says, “Roses are red, violets aren’t green, being with you is like living a dream.” That was from Terrence on our first Valentine’s Day together as a married couple and I just felt like it ought to be framed.
Flo is doing a slow walk around her house to see if there is anything else she should tell Ruthie about. It’s raining, the kind of heavy, messy rain that coats the windows with sheets of water and turns the view outside into an indistinct watercolor. She hopes it quits soon; she has arranged for Mildred and Teresa to meet at Mildred’s house. It’s not far, of course, but Flo has never been one of those love-to-walk-in-the-rain types. No. It’s a big fat nuisance to walk in the rain.
She stands before the living room bookcase and bends down to scan the titles. Well, for heaven’s sake, there isMrs. Mike.She remembers now she read it just before she and Terrence were married. Flo was in such a romantic state in those days, and this book just added to it. It is about a sixteen-year-old girl from Boston who marries a handsome Canadian Mountie and it nigh onto made Flo swoon. She still remembers lying in bed waiting for Terrence on their wedding night, thinking that both the girl in the book and she had had a lucky break, finding the men they did.
She pulls the book off the shelf and sees a little paper bag hidden behind it. She opens it to find three twenty-dollar bills and a photograph of a particular locket Flo had seen in the paper years ago and had cut out just to look at. It was so pretty, fourteen-karat gold filigree and a few little diamonds here and there. She stuck it in the napkin holder to keep for a while, but it disappeared after a few days. She figured Terrence had tossed it and that was okay with Flo,she was done drooling over it. But now she realizes Terrence had been saving to buy it for her, and he’d kept that picture so that he’d get the right thing.
What to do with this? She doesn’t want to use the money to buy anything because it seems that would somehow be wrong. It would dishonor Terrence’s intentions. He wanted it to be a lovely surprise.
She goes to the kitchen and writes a note:To whoever finds this: Use this money to buy something nice for someone who is not suspecting it.Then she puts the little sack back and pulls the book out just slightly from where it had been. A clue. Isn’t it fun to think about who might find it, and what they might buy?
It’s time to go to Mildred’s, and luckily the rain has stopped. Flo makes her way carefully down the steps and avoids the puddles to get to Mildred’s house. While she doesn’t like walkinginthe rain, she sure does like the smellaftera rain, and the way the birds come back out and fluff up their feathers like they’re miffed.
When Flo arrives at Mildred’s house, Teresa is already there, sitting in the living room, where Mildred has set out a silver tea service. And someone else is there, too: Mimi the librarian. All of the women are a little dressed up. Mildred is wearing a white blouse and a long flowered skirt. Mimi has on a red dress with white polka dots, and she has a red scarf tied artfully around her neck. Flo has never seen Teresa in a dress, but she’s wearing a navy blue one today, and she’s wearing a yellow scarf tied the same way; Flo thinks Mimi might have taught her how to doit.
“Well, isn’tthisnice?” Flo says, sitting down in one of the comfortable armchairs.
“Have a cookie,” Mildred says. “I didn’t make them, so they’re good.”
“I will,” Flo says, and she hopes Mildred won’t notice if she doesn’t eat.
“We’re talking about whether love at first sight is real,” Mimi says. “So far, it’s a divided opinion. Guess who doesn’t believe in it and who does?”
“Teresa doesn’t,” Flo says.
“Neither does Mimi,” says Mildred. “But I do. How about you, Flo?”
“Course I believe in it. I experienced it.”
