Gryphon: New and Selected Stories (4 page)

“I know,” the voice told her. “I just wish I could be there.”

“So do I,” Margaret said, a thin electrical charge of panic spreading over her. “I wish you could be here to keep me company. How are you?”

“Just fine. Jerry’s out of town, but of course David’s with me, and last night we roasted marshmallows and made a big bowl of popcorn.”

David. Oh, yes: her grandchild. This must be David’s mother. “Penny,” she said.

“What?”

“I just wanted to say your name.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Margaret said carelessly. “Because I just thought of it.”

“Mother, are you all right?”

“Just fine, dear. I’m going to take the bus to see your father in half an hour’s time. I’m going to wish him a happy anniversary. I doubt he’ll notice. He won’t remember it’s our anniversary, I don’t think. Maybe he won’t remember me. You can never tell.” She laughed. “As he says, the moving men just come and take it all away. You can’t tell about anything. For example, I thought they put a new window in my room last night, but I’d only forgotten to pull down the window shade.” She noticed a list on the refrigerator, a list of things she must do today. It was getting late. “Good-bye, Penny,” she said, before hanging up. She took the list off the refrigerator and put it in her pocket. Then she stood in the middle of the room, her mind whirling and utterly blank, while she stared at the faucet on the right-hand side of the sink and, above it, attached to the cabinet, a faded color photograph of a brown-haired girl, looking away from the camera toward a tree. It was probably Penny, when young.

Once Margaret was on the bus, she was sure that everything would be fine. The sun was out, and several children were playing their peculiar games on the sidewalk, smacking each other and rolling over to play dead. Why weren’t they in school? She knew better than to ask children to explain their reasons for being in any one spot. If you asked such questions, they always had that look ready.

The bus was practically empty. All the passengers, thank God, seemed to be respectable taxpayers: a gentleman with several strands of attractive gray hair sat two rows in front of her, comforting her with his presence. The sun, now yellow, was shining fiercely on Margaret’s side of the bus, its ferocity tempered by tinted glass.

Margaret felt the sun on her face and said, “Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.” This, her one and only phrase to express joy, she had picked up from a newspaper article that had tried to make fun of Gertrude Stein. The article had quoted one of her poems, and Margaret had
remembered its first line ever since. “Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea,” she said again, gazing out the window at obscurely sinister trees, with far too many leaves, all of them the wrong shape.

Horace, before he had been deposited in the First Christian Residence, had been a great one for trees: after they had bought a house, he had planted them in the backyard, trimmed them, fed them, watered them when droughts dusted their leaves. “Trees,” he liked to say, “give back more than they take. Fruit, oxygen, and shade. And for this they expect no gratitude.” He would have been happy working in a nursery or a greenhouse. As it was, he worked in a bank, and never talked about exactly what he did there. “It’s boring,” he would say. “You don’t want to hear about it.” Margaret agreed; she didn’t. Only toward the end had he raged against the nature of his work. But he didn’t shout at Margaret; he told the trees. He told them how money had gobbled up his life. He talked about waste and cash, and he wept into his hands. Margaret watched him from the kitchen window. She watched him as he lost his memory and began to give names to the trees: Esther, Jonas, Ezekiel, Isaiah. He told Margaret that trees should have serious, adult names. For eighteen months now, he had confused the names of his trees with the names of his children. He wanted his trees to come visit him in the home. “Bring in Esther,” he would say. “I want to see her.”

Because of this, Margaret no longer gazed at trunks, branches, or leaves with any special pleasure.

She remembered where to get off the bus and was about to go into the residence when she realized that she had no anniversary present. She stood motionless on the sidewalk. “He won’t remember,” she said aloud. “What’s the difference?” She waited a moment and found that she disagreed with her own assessment. “It does make a difference. He’ll think I’m making it up if I don’t bring him something.” She looked around. At the corner there was a small grocery store with a large red Coca-Cola sign over its door. “I’ll go down there,” she said.

The store was darker than it should have been and was crowded with confusing teenagers. Margaret found herself looking at peanut-butter labels and long rows of lunch meat. Then she was in front of the cash register, holding two Hershey bars. “I’ll buy these,” she said to the coarse
girl with the brown ponytail and the pimples. She was already far down the street when she realized that she hadn’t waited for change, or a bag to put the chocolate in. It was the first time she had given him a present she hadn’t wrapped.

Holding the candy bars and her purse in one hand, she opened the large front door of the First Christian Residence with the other. This was the worst moment, because of the smell. Margaret knew that oldsters couldn’t always keep themselves clean and tidy, but their smell offended her nevertheless. Just inside, a man with wild hair and a bruise on his forehead, whose eyes were an angelic blue, smiled at her and followed her in his wheelchair as she walked to the elevator. A yellow Have-a-nice-day sticker, with a smiley face, was glued to the back of the chair.

“Beautiful day, Margaret. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.” This man had been pestering her for months. He was forward, and looked at her with an old man’s dry yearning. “Yes,” she repeated, inside the elevator, as she pressed the button for the third floor, wanting the door to close. “It is indeed a nice day. You should get outside into the sunshine for some fresh air and vitamin D, instead of staying in here all the time.”

He wheeled himself onto the elevator and turned around so he was next to her. “I stayed,” he said, “because I was hoping you’d come.” The elevator doors closed, at last. “I can still walk, you know. This chair is a convenience.”

Margaret tried to sound chilly. “I’m going to see Horace, my husband. I don’t have time for you.”

“Horace won’t miss you. His memory’s bad. He remembers the 1945 World Series better than he remembers you. Let’s go for a walk.”

“No, thank you.” She remembered his name. “No, thank you, Mr. Bartlett.”

“It’s Jim. Not ‘Mr. Bartlett.’ Jim.” He smiled. She noticed again his remarkable eyes. The numbers above the doors flashed. It was the slowest elevator she’d ever been on, slow to prevent shocks to the elderly.

“This is my stop,” she said, backing out into the hallway once the doors opened. As they closed again, Mr. Bartlett leaned back in his wheelchair and gave her a bold look.

Horace was in his room, wearing a Wayne State University sweatshirt, gray corduroys, and tennis shoes. He was watching a quiz show and eagerly smoking when Margaret came in. He glanced at her and then went back to the activity of the contestants. On the screen, a woman in uniform was spinning a huge, multicolored wheel, and the studio audience was roaring, but Horace failed to share the excitement and watched the television set indifferently. Margaret picked up a newspaper from the chair by the window and arranged the flowerpots on the sill.

“Good morning, dear,” she said. “How did you sleep?”

Horace didn’t answer. Perhaps it would be one of those days. Lately he had been retreating into silence. Apparently he found it comforting. Margaret clucked, shook her head, and walked over to the television set, which she turned off.

“It’s our anniversary,” she said. “I don’t want daytime television on our anniversary.”

On the table next to Horace was a breakfast roll. A fly walked back and forth on it, as if on sentry duty. Margaret picked up the plate and took it out to the hallway, placing it on the floor next to the wall. When she came back, Horace was still staring at the dark television screen.

She gazed at him for a moment. Then she said brightly, “Do you remember Mrs. Silverman, two floors up in the building, Horace? The apartment building? Where we moved after we sold the house? Mrs. Silverman, whose husband was so terribly bald? I’m sure you do. Well, anyway, several nights ago there was a great commotion, and it seemed that Mrs. Silverman was reading the paper, probably just the want ads, as she did usually, when she had one of those seizures of hers. She knocked over a tall glass of ginger ale. It left a stain on the rug, I think. They came for her and took her to the hospital, but the word in the building is that it may be curtains for Mrs. Silverman.”

“The moving men,” Horace rasped.

“Yes, Horace, the moving men. Someone in the building called for them. Sometimes they can help and other times they can’t. You are looking very scruffy today, Horace,” she said. “Where did you get that awful sweatshirt?”

“Someone gave it to me,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

“Who?” she asked. “Not that horrid little Mr. List?”

“Maybe.” Horace shrugged.

“I’d think you’d be ashamed to be in that sweatshirt. You were never a student at Wayne State. Never. You went to Oberlin.”

“It’s warm,” Horace said. “And it’s green.”

“Which reminds me,” Margaret announced, “that I thought they had put a new window into our bedroom last night. But I just forgot to pull down the shade. Oh. Someone called this morning.” She thought for a moment. “Penny.” She waited for him to show recognition, but he kept his face turned away from hers. “She called to wish us a happy anniversary. It’s our anniversary today, Horace.”

“I know that,” he said. “I know that very well.”

“Well, I’m glad. I brought you something.”

“Lightbulbs?”

“No. Not lightbulbs. I explained to you about the lightbulbs. You don’t need them. What do you need them for?”

“Bliss,” Horace said.

“For bliss? I doubt it. No. Well, what I brought you was this.” She handed him the chocolate bars. “Happy anniversary, dear. These were the best I could do. I am sorry. Age has brought us low. I would have presented you with a plant in the old days.”

“These
are
the old days,” Horace said. He gazed down at the dark brown wrappers. “Thank you. Mr. List likes chocolate. So do I, but Mr. List likes chocolate more than I do.” Horace suddenly looked at her, and she flinched. “How’s Penny? And where’s Isaiah?”

“Penny’s fine. She toasted marshmallows with David last night. And Isaiah’s lost his leaves because it’s late October.”

Horace nodded. He appeared to think for a long time. Then he said, “I went out yesterday. I wanted to drop something on the ground the way the trees do. Dead leaves reactivate the soil, you know. They don’t rake leaves in the forest, only in the suburbs. It’s against nature and foolhardy to rake leaves. I pulled out a strand of my hair and left it in the grass. Why did we get married in October? Tell me again.” He smirked at her. “I’ve forgotten. I’ve lost my memory.”

“It was 1930, Horace. Times were hard. When you finally secured a job at the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank, I agreed to marry you.”

“Yes.”

Margaret knew she had made a serious mistake as soon as she saw the tears: she had mentioned the bank.

“When did you stop kissing me?” Horace asked.

“What?”

“After the war. You wouldn’t kiss me after the war. Why not?”

“I think this is very unpleasant, Horace. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. You wouldn’t kiss me after the war. Why?”

“You know very well,” she said.

“Tell me again,” Horace said. “I’ve lost my memory.”

“I didn’t like it,” she muttered, standing up to look out of the window.

“What didn’t you like?”

“I didn’t like the way you kissed me. Too many germs.”

“We weren’t old yet,” Horace said. “It’s what adults do. They have passions. You can’t fool me about that.”

Margaret felt tired and hungry. She wished she hadn’t taken the breakfast roll out to the hallway.

“I’m not here to settle old scores,” she said. “Do you want to split one of these candy bars?” Outside, a blue convertible with a white canvas roof came to a stop at an intersection and seemed unable to move, and all around it the small pedestrians froze into timeless attitudes, and the sun blinked on and off, as if a boy were flipping a wall switch.

Horace struck a kitchen match on the zipper of his pants and lit up a cigarette. “I love cigarettes,” he said. “I get ideas from the smoke. Call me crazy if you want to, but yesterday I was thinking about how few decisions in my life were truly important. I didn’t decide about the war and I didn’t decide to drop the bomb. They didn’t ask me about nuclear generators, or, for that matter, about coal generators. I had opinions. They could have asked me. But they didn’t. Mr. List and I were discussing this yesterday. The only thing they ever asked us was what we were going to do on the weekends. That’s all. ‘What are you doing Saturday night?’ That’s the only question I can remember.”