“When I visited her last, we had a plateful of shortbread cookies with our coffee, and she told me she’d been thinking about what she would like to be laid out in, and she wasn’t even sick! But there comes a time. She said, ‘You know, I’ve got this turquoise negligee William gave me years ago. I only wore it but two or three times and it didn’t stay on long, if you know what I mean. It was transparent, and when you put on the matching robe it wasstilltransparent.’ She winked at me and said, ‘We liked that in those days, didn’t we? But anyway,’ she said, ‘I was thinking, What if there is a heaven and you can arrive all young again and dressed in whatever you want? I would like to meet him dressed in that negligee he gave me. Do you think that’s sinful?’ I told her, ‘No, I do not.’ I said, ‘In fact, you’re giving me ideas for when my time comes.’ Though I never did own such a thing as a negligee. It was not something Terrence and I could afford, a garment meant to dangle over someone; we were more practical. My nighties had lace and flowers, but that is not the same thing at all as what Pris was talking about.
“She took me into her bedroom, and in her dresser was that negligee, still wrapped in perfumed tissue, and it waslike a cloud of a thing, a beautiful turquoise cloud, seemed like it had been spun by fairies.”
Now the pain Flo is feeling increases. She shifts on her chair and pretends it is only so she can look out at the yard better. She stares straight ahead but continues with her story. “Pris asked if I would like for her to model it and then we laughed; she was only kidding, of course. But she wanted to be wearing it in case she transformed into that young Pris, and oh goodness, what a sultry young woman she was. Men turning their heads to watch her walk by, and sometimes it seemed like they might could have walked right into a brick wall. Abeautifulwoman.”
The women sit quietly, and then Flo says, “What I want is to be buried in my travel suit, which I wore only once but always supposed I might use again. I felt as beautiful in it as I spect Priscilla felt in her negligee. I wore it on the one and only airplane ride Terrence and I ever took. He won an award from work and we went clean out to San Francisco, California, for a fancy vacation. Oh, that was something, and the plane ride out there was as good as anything we saw. When those propellers started turning, I felt like Ingrid Bergman in that hat she wore inCasablanca.”
A sharp pain now, and Flo says, “Will you excuse me for a minute?”
She goes to the bathroom and stands there, and the pain subsides. Huh. Well, she’s always had a rather delicate digestive system. Not like some others who seem like they can eatanything. Terrence, for example, who could probably have salted an earwig, eaten it, and called it delicious.
Why don’t you try tofindsomeone?she wants to askTeresa, which means,Don’tyouseeyou?But maybe Teresa can’t see herself. Maybe no one can see themselves, really. Flo has heard about true mirrors, which show people the reverse image of what they usually see in mirrors: they let people see themselves as other people see them. But maybe otherpeopleare the real—and better—true mirrors.
There must be a way she can help Teresa. Someone she could ask some questions of. Wait a minute! Why not a librarian? They know everything. And they don’t make you feel foolish, no matter what you ask.
I have a photograph of me in my bedroom in a red coat with big white buttons. There’s a story behind that coat.
When I was nineteen years old, I had a job manning the counter at a dry cleaner called Tidy Press. Working at a dry cleaner was not on my lit-up bulletin board of the mind, but I figured it would do until something better came along. The people who owned it, Mr. and Mrs. Schmitt, were a study in contrasts. He was as nice as he could be, he was so kind. His wife, though. I always told my friend Judy McGrath that the wife reminded me of a coat hanger, all hard angles, skinny and stiff as could be. You’ve heard it said that some people are so unsmiling it seems like their faces would crack if they did smile. Mrs. Schmitt smiled all the time, but it was thin and vicious. Seemed like her favorite thing to do was to wait for me to do something wrong. She yelled at me for dropping things. For mispronouncing a customer’s name. For not moving quickly enough. For moving too quickly. For dressing wrong. I didn’t hardly know how to hold my head after a while. She chipped away at me. I remember one day I came home after work and called Judy and I was bawling on the phone so bad she could hardly make out what I was saying. But finally she said, Tell you what, come on over to my house and we’ll go out for ice cream sundaes. Judy was pregnant then and she had a sundae just about every day. She said the babydemanded it, and I for one was glad it did. Well, we had a bolstering talk and the next day at work I went into the back to get some safety pins and when I came out Mrs. Schmitt started screeching about my leaving the counter unattended for the three seconds it took me to get the pins. She had my paycheck in her hand. I snatched it from her and then I said, I quit. Oh no you don’t, she said. Oh yes I do, said I, right plucky, and I knocked on Mr. Schmitt’s door and I told him thank you for hiring me and I sure did appreciate the work, but this would be my last day and goodbye. You know he didn’t even ask me why. He knew. He said, You’re a good girl. I said, Well, I’d always thought so. I wish you the very best, he said, going back to his ledger and his buzzing desk light, which he also put up with.
I called Judy to meet me at Woolworth’s, and on the way I went to Ebert’s department store, where I’d seen a red coat in the front window that I liked but it was too expensive for me. I guess you know the rest of the story. Every time I wore that red coat, I felt the strength of standing up for myself. When I sat down with Judy that day, she said, Nice coat, and I said, You don’t know the half of it. I had enough money left from my paycheck to buy both our sundaes, and that’s what I did. And don’t you know I found another, much better, job the very next day. Seems like sometimes you say, I’ve about had enough, and something else says, Well, why didn’t you say so, then. Here. And here. And here.
I guess I feel like this story might in a roundabout way help you some with your decision. Oh, Honey, don’t you remember the time your whole family came to visit and you andyour husband were standing out in my backyard while your children played Mother May I with me and I saw your husband put his hand to your cheek in a way so tender I had to put my hand to my own face. Ruthie, when you are recalling injustices, recall the other things, too.
Flo opens her refrigerator to contemplate what she might have for dinner. Nothing looks too appealing. She decides she’ll just have cold cereal, something she likes a lot any time of day. Her friend Barbara Fanning used to tell her, “Flo, if you keep eating that you’ll get big as a house; it’s well documented.” Anything Barbara wanted you to believe she would tell you was well documented. And if ever you got impatient and askedwhereit was well documented, she’d say, “Never mind.”
As she eats, Flo reads the community newspaper. There’s a story about a cat in a nursing home that lies on the beds of the people there who allow it to. Flo thinks it might be a comfort to have a cat on her bed. She always wanted a cat, but Terrence didn’t like them. “No cats!” he would say, and then he had to go and make a face when he said it, to boot. Flo didn’t get mad at Terrence very often, but sometimes they would fight about the no-cat rule. Well, Flo fixed him. She got porcelain cats and kept them on her dresser, a mother cat and two kittens. Siamese. Those were her cats. The mother’s name was Tippy and the kittens were Spill and Chase.
A little kid might want those porcelain cats. They could pretend they were pets same as she did. Take them outside or bring them to school for show-and-tell. A kid might break them but that’s all right, they would have gotten broken from being used, which is entirely different from when you accidentally knock something off a table and there it is, gone forever, and you stand there staring hard at the broken thing like a certain look could bring all the pieces back together.
Do they still have show-and-tell in school? Flo wonders. She always liked seeing what other kids found interesting or special. One time when it was show-and-tell in her fourth-grade classroom, she had forgotten to bring something. So she took off her cardigan sweater, which had jewels at the shoulder, and when it was her turn she held it up and talked about it, told how her aunt had given it to her and it made her feel queenly. Well, the boys didn’t care one whit, but some girls wanted to try that sweater on at recess. Flo was popular that day.
Schools do still have recess, at least. When Flo walks around the neighborhood, she passes an elementary school, and when it is recess time she always likes to watch and see what’s going on. There’s an awful lot of this so-called technology that Flo finds mostly incomprehensible; she is not one of those modern older women wearing stylish sneakers and poking at a little telephone screen.Everybodyis poking at their screens except for animals! Even toddlers. Not long ago, Flo saw a woman pushing a toddler in a carriage and they werebothon their phones. Flo had to stop walking and stare. And she knows other people’s business is not her business but heavens to Betsy.
One thing Flo likes about watching recess is that it’s still the same. No technology out there, leastwise not yet. Just kids hanging by their knees from the jungle gym or riding high on the swings, or big groups of kids chasing each other at breakneck speed and yelling their heads off, or maybe a couple of kids huddled together in the corner of the playground hatching a plot or pretending something. Once she heard a little boy say, “Let’s play Army and have names. I’llbe Colonel Bill Williams.” “Bill and William are the same thing,” said one of his friends, and the little boy said, “No they are not. One is Bill and one is William.”
In Flo’s opinion, pretending is awfully good for you. It can lift you up and take you miles away from where you are. And of course kids are natural actors, and don’t theybecomea cat, or a monster with seven eyes waving around on stalks, or a king in some made-up land. Occasionally she sees a little kid alone, maybe wearing glasses with an elastic round the back of his head, maybe dragging a stick behind him. Flo likes to chance talking to kids like that, leaning over the chain-link fence to holler yoo-hoo and ask how they’re doing. She always wants to share some butterscotch candies from her purse with them but Lord knows you can’t dothatanymore. But she asks how they’re doing. And because they are children and have trust and willingness and honesty, they will usually tell her. And mostly they are fine, just solitary beings who like to think their own thoughts. Flo always thinks, Well, there’s another Steve Jobs comingup.
I still have that little table and chairs you used to sit at to color, or to make your paper fortune tellers. Do you remember how you used to put some bad fortunes in there sometimes? “A truck will mow you down” was one. I told you once you ought not to do that, and didn’t you look me straight in the eye and say, Life is not all fun and games, Flo. What were you, eight or nine? I nearly busted out laughing, but instead I just nodded and said I guess not, but I’m going to hope I don’t get a fortune like that too often! And you patted my hand and said, Now, Flo, you won’t.
I hope you won’t throw away that table and chairs, Ruthie. I’m sure some child can use them, and you know children are always so pleased when furniture fits them.
Don’t throw away my cast-iron skillet, either. It is so well seasoned now, everything you cook in it tastes good. My daddy used it for fried chicken that made you want to beat your fists on the table. I saw how he made it, but mine never turned out as good as his so that is one recipe I will not be giving you. But if you can eat in heaven guess what I’m ordering to accompany my mound of mashed potatoes big as Mount Kilimanjaro and two ears of corn plucked straight from the field.
Do you know the best way to cook corn on the cob? Put it in a pan of cold water with a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of sugar. Bring it to a boil and let it go two minutes, then turn off the flame and let it set for ten. Bingo.
I’ll tell you what, there’s nothing wrong with serving just corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes for dinner in summertime. Go out to Dairy Queen afterward and sit at their picnic table and eat your ice cream and watch everybody else eat theirs and you will have had yourself a day.
Speaking of eating, I just remembered a time I watched you eat a tablespoon of dirt, and when I asked you what in the world you were doing you said you were seeing how it tasted plus you were not afraid of germs. You must have been about seven, sitting out in my front yard under the Miss Kim lilacs, which was one of your favorite places where you sometimes made little houses complete with crops, which were red berries you lined up straight in rows. That day you ate dirt, you had one eye squinted against the sun and you were wearing the cutest yellow sundress with spaghetti straps that I figured you’d begged your mother for but then had sullied by nine that morning—jelly stains and mud and butterfly dust. What a fierce little girl you were, fierce and gentle all at the same time. I had a good laugh remembering your eating dirt.
I woke up today to a rose-gold-colored morning and it was the prettiest day, the kind where the world seems washed, everything about as crystal clear as it gets, even to these old eyes. The lines of the roof on the house across the street, the little bend of the twig on the tree when a bird landed on it, so sure of himself and looking around in that proprietary way birds can have. Well, I got dressed and went out on the porch and sat down on my wicker chair with the cushions so old I don’t remember how old, but they are comfortable, they know me and my bones. I sat there and I had the sharpest feeling ofsorrow that I would be leaving all this soon, the common wonders of the world.
And then you know, I just got afraid. I got afraid in that way of when you might look all right on the outside but on the inside you feel the trembling. And I got up and despite the glory of the day I got back in bed and lay real still. I was thinking, What can I do, what can I do? I closed my eyes and pulled my breath seems like down to my toes, and I said to myself, I shall be released.
Only problem with that is I don’t want to be released, not today, not with the sun carving out a living painting right before my eyes. Not with the way I want to help my new friend Teresa. It seemed like I was going to go into a panic, maybe crying and thrashing around and the like, and there I was all dressed with even my shoes on. Well, I got up and I straightened the bed and I went outside again fast as I could, went around to the backyard, where I stood beside the clothesline pole and I asked myself this question: Do you want to hang out yet another load of laundry when you can’t hardly lift a towel? Haven’t you hung out enough wash in all your years? Here came the answer whooshing into my heart: No. I wouldn’t mind a bit hanging up a few more loads, and if you’re one of those never saw the point in hanging out pillowcases, I’ll hang yours for you, and when they’re dry I’ll deliver them to you come twilight and say rest your head on these when you go to bed and smell the sunshine, even with the darkness come and the wind blowing. Close your eyes and turn your face to that smell and you will feel cared for like when your momma yanked your blankets clean up to your chin andplanted a kiss on your forehead that you will forever long for. And someone else can kiss you on the forehead but it’s not the same, lovely as it might be, it’s not the same.
Well, now look how I am going on about that, I wonder if I am plum going to lose my mind. I hope not. I got to sniff and center here, and that’s what I did out in my backyard, finally, I did sniff and center, it’s something I’ve done forever to calm down. I close my eyes and take long breaths and go down into myself deep and still. And on that day I also closed my eyes and made cups of my hands and I prayed to Jesus to fill me with light and help me not to be afraid. And it worked. Lot of people don’t ask Jesus for anything, thinking He has got a long checklist and they don’t hardly figure in it. But I don’t believe that’s how it works, to me Jesus just waits for us to call on Him, and then it’s just as likely as not He’ll gather you in His arms and your prayer will be answered. It happens! Naturally I don’t mean He really gathers you in His arms, you just feel like that, cared for, and heard. Terrence never did buy any of that religion stuff (he called it crap, which always made me so fearful that here would come a lightning bolt for us both), but he never tried to take my faith from me. He would shake his head gentle, but he never said one unkind word about my beliefs. Terrence was just more practical. For him, life was in and out. In and out. I suppose if you keep that in your head, it offers a certain strength. But Ruthie, the light this morning.
Let me move on. Here is something I am right embarrassed about. In the top drawer of my breakfront in my dining room you will find just about a million candles. Over and over again I would splurge on long, elegant tapers and then I would find them too pretty to burn. Oh, I used candles, but only thecheap ones. The pretty ones stayed in the drawer where no one could see them. Now, a candle’s flame is pretty no matter what, but I hope you will use those long candles. Maybe you could do like in romantic movies and burn them all at once. Wouldn’t that be pretty?
