Lilac Avenue (2 page)

“
Impossible,” Mamie said. “It must have been an error at the bank. I’ll have my accountants call them.”

Mamie dug down in her tote bag and fished out a
bill. She didn’t know what denomination it was, but she dropped it on the counter. Jeanette may be stupid, but she had always been honest. Mamie accepted her change and held out one of her tote bags for the books.

“Thank you,” Jeanette said. “Have a nice day.”

“I imagine it will be the same as any other,” Mamie said. “But at least I’ll have something new to read.”

Mamie
made her way back across the street and down Rose Hill Avenue to the Bee Hive Hair Salon, where she pushed open the door.

“Denise,” she called out. “I need a haircut.”

“Mamie, it’s Claire Fitzpatrick,” someone responded, a blurry, tall shape standing behind the front reception desk.

It was an
other one of those awful Fitzpatrick girls, a cousin of the bookstore owner. At least this one smelled good, no cheap perfume here; it was lily of the valley and peony, and something else, something like sandalwood. It reminded Mamie of her grandmother, who had come all the way from Germany on a big boat, and then by train. It was when Mamie was a little girl, when they lived in the big house down by the river. Hildeberta Rodefeffer was a big, loud woman who made Mamie’s father laugh and her mother tremble. She called Mamie “Liebling” and gave her a stuffed bear.

“Denise is still out on maternity leave,” Claire said.

“What is this, her tenth?” Mamie asked. “Those Eye-talians breed like rabbits.”

“That’s not very nice,” Claire said. “You’ll have to mind your manners
if you want me to cut your hair, Mamie.”

Mamie was glad to hear she wasn’t still banned fr
om this establishment as well. Lately, every time she called for an appointment, Claire had informed her there weren’t any available. She guessed that was harder to do to her face.

Mamie set down all her tote
bags, took off her raincoat, and hung it on the coat rack. She made her way to the shampoo bowl and gingerly lowered herself down into the chair. Her left leg was giving her trouble, and she was so afraid to fall. To her relief, Claire assisted her in reclining, and she was too grateful to fuss about how she didn’t need anyone’s help.

The hot water felt
good on her scalp, and Claire massaged the shampoo in with firm, swirling motions. It felt so nice to have someone touch her so gently, so comfortingly. It had been a long time since anyone had. She felt herself slip into unconsciousness, and she was too tired to resist.

Nino was there,
down at their house by the river, sitting on the front porch, laughing with her Grandmother.

“Leibling,” her grandmother called to her. “Hurry up. We’re waiting.”

Claire gently woke her, and as confused as Mamie felt, and vulnerable, she also somehow felt safe with Claire. A soft-hearted fool who wouldn’t hurt a fly, she figured. She allowed Claire to help her stand and guide her to the haircutting chair.

When Claire removed the towel she had wrapped around Mamie’s head, the cool air gave her a chill, and she shuddered.

“Are you cold?” Claire asked her.

“I’m always cold,” Mamie said.

Claire went to the back room and returned with two large towels, which must have been tumbling in the dryer, they were so warm. Claire wrapped one around Mamie’s upper body and one around her legs.

“There,” Claire said.
“That should help.”

The warmth was so delicious
and the gesture so kind that Mamie felt tears come to her eyes. She removed her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she kept stuffed up one sleeve.

‘I’m getting soft,’ Mamie thought. ‘I should chide her for her impertinence.’

Instead, for once, she said nothing.

Claire swirled the nylon cape around Mamie’s shoulders and fastened it at her neck. She combed her hair and snipped away at it, then blew it dry and curled it with a curling iron.

All the while, Mamie inhaled Claire’s perfume and let it take her back to the days her grandmother had visited. Her loud, vivacious grandmother (“peasant stock” Mamie’s mother had sneered) had been so kind, so generous, and so lively. She had charmed every servant, every worker at the factory, in fact, everyone but Mamie’s mother. After she left, the house seemed both larger and colder.

“
What do you think?” Claire asked her, and Mamie snapped back to the present.

Mamie squinted through her glasses at her visage in the mirror, but she could only make out the
fuzzy shape of their forms against sunlight from the nearby window.

“Well, it’s not the worst I’ve ever had,” Mamie said.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Claire said.

“It’s the only kind you’re likely to get,” Mamie said.

Claire removed the cape and towels. She let the hydraulic chair down so that Mamie’s feet could touch the ground. Mamie had become so warm and cozy that she was loath to leave the place.

“Do you mind if I j
ust sit here a minute?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Claire said. “Stay as long as you like.”

“Thank you, dear,” Mamie said, before she could remind herself it was best to be impersonal with servants.

Mamie sat there for a few minutes, just looking at the sunshine coming through the window, and resting. She was so tired, so deathly tired. She wondered how on earth she would be able to walk all the way home, up Pine Mountain Road to Morning Glory Circle. That hill seemed insurmountable today.

With a heavy sigh, she used her cane and the arm of the chair to stand. She tested her weight on her left leg and it held. She walked over to the counter, picked up one of her tote bags and removed a bill. The thought of lifting and carrying all those heavy bags all the way up the hill made her feel so weary, but she must. Everything she cared about most was held inside them.

“Don’t forget your change,” Claire said.

She almost told Claire to keep the change.

Almost.

When Mamie finally got home she set down her tote bags, locked the front door behind her, and sat down to rest on the boot bench in the front hallway. She was short of breath and her heart pounded in her chest. Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to walk up the hill, nor up her own front stairs. What then? If she sold everything she owned she might be able to afford to live in one of those homes where they put old people. Bad smells, crazy roommates, rude servants, and there she’d be, trapped like a rat in a cage, until she died.

‘I’d rather die
now,’ she thought.

She felt weary down into her bones.
It took all of her strength to take off her shoes and put on her slippers. It was cold in the house. So cold. She leaned back against the staircase and felt time slip away.

A
knock on the door roused her from her nap. Gingerly she got to her feet, testing her left leg before she put weight on it. She leaned heavily on her cane as she slowly shuffled to the door. She looked out the window next to the door but couldn’t make out who it was. Someone small, a child, maybe, holding something.

“Who is it?” she shouted.

“It’s Kevin, ma’am,” the boy said. “From the Mountain Laurel Depot.”

Mamie recognized the voice of the dimwitted young man who cleaned tables at the Depot.
He seemed harmless enough. She opened the door and scowled at him. He backed up a step.

“What do you want?”
she demanded.

“Phyllis sent your lunch,” he said. “On account of you missed your breakfast.”

“She did, did she?” Mamie said. “Well, I didn’t order it and I’m not paying for it.”

“No charge,” he said. “Honest.”

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” Mamie said. “Well, don’t just stand there, bring it in.”

He broug
ht in the pan of food and sat the dishes where Mamie directed him to, on the side table next to her reading chair in the north parlor. Mamie felt around in her change purse and came up with a quarter for the boy.

“Thank you, Miss Rodefeffer,” he said.

“You tell Phyllis whatever she wants the answer is no,” Mamie said.

“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said.

Mamie took her most important tote bag, the one with the thin straps that had the new books in it, into the parlor and sat in her favorite chair. Out of the tote bag she retrieved her mail and one of the new romance novels, and then sat back, savoring the softness of her chair and how it enveloped her, embraced her. She took off her walking glasses and put on her reading glasses.

Mamie opened the first envelop
e, only to find she couldn’t read what was written on the page inside. She used her page magnifier and tried again, but the words were still a blur on the page. Panicked, she dropped the mail on the floor and opened the new romance novel. Using the skirt of her dress, she cleaned the lenses in her glasses, and again held the page magnifier over the page.

It was no use. She couldn’t read a thing.

“Useless glasses,” she said.

She
took them off, and placed them on the side table. She put on her walking glasses and used her cane to balance herself as she pushed up and out of her chair. Her left leg gave way; she fell sideways, and landed on her side on the oriental carpet. The fall was so unexpected that she lay there for a moment, stunned, to try to gather her bearings. The telephone was over on the other side of her chair, out of her reach. There was no one expected to visit, no servants to whom she could call out.

Luckily she had fallen in stages,
almost in slow motion, down onto her knees, to her hip, then onto her hands and elbows, and finally onto her side. Nothing had snapped, or felt broken. The rug was a good one, thick and soft.

“Well, fudge,” she said.

That was something her last housekeeper used to say, for which Mamie would reprimand her. So lower-class, that chattering woman, always some family drama with all those children and grandchildren. She was constantly asking for time off. She had quit in a huff over something Mamie had done; what was that?

‘Oh, that,’ Mamie remembered.

Not too long ago, on a particularly bad night
of a trying week, Mamie had used her cane to strike her own great-great-granddaughter Grace, and had thoroughly enjoyed doing it. If certain nosy busybodies hadn’t intervened, she might have repeated the blow a few times.

‘Impertinent guttersnipe,
’ Mamie thought.

Mamie
tried to move the leg that had given way. It was a dead weight, with no strength left in it. She closed her eyes, relaxed, and almost fell asleep. That wouldn’t do.

Mamie rolled onto her stomach and pulled her right leg up under he
r body. She was able to get up on her one good knee and both hands, and then grasp the arm of her chair. She pivoted herself over to the chair so she could pull herself up with her weight on her right leg. She turned and collapsed in her chair, breathing heavily. Her heart fluttered in her chest, was silent and still, and then fluttered again. She put her left hand on the receiver of the phone and then stopped. Whom would she call?

Emergency services would take her
straight to a hospital, and ultimately they would send her to a nursing home. If she called Knox or Trick, her nephews would call Doc Machalvie, who would skip the hospital and send her straight to a nursing home, and probably not a good one. They’d waste no time, would immediately wrest control of her finances and sell everything, take everything. She’d never sleep another night in this house.

In the nursing home s
he believed she’d be at the mercy of strangers, lower-class peasants being paid pennies per hour to change adult diapers. They’d steal anything they could get their hands on. If she fussed they’d drug her into a stupor.

She might call Jeanette at the bookstore, or Claire at the Bee Hive. They were kind, foolish people who would be willing to help her. Unfortunately
, that would only prolong the inevitable; neither of those women would take care of her long term. No one would, unless she could afford to pay.

She thought of all the staff members she had employed over the years; every single one had left on bad terms. She had never cared; there were always more where they came from. Always so polite and solicitous when they started, but she soon taught them to cower and slink. She secretly liked
the mouthy back-talkers the best. At least with them she could enjoy the frisson of antagonism and a good fight. Mamie won, of course, as the one with the most money always does. But she had a thimbleful of grudging respect for the ones who would not put up with her abuse, who left her before she could fire them.

She turned toward her wall shelves filled wi
th her books, the only things that she had been able to count upon to soothe her anxieties, to look forward to with pleasure. They were useless to her now. What would she do with her time? The television was fine when her eyes needed a rest, and she had a radio here somewhere. But what good was surviving without the escape into her book world?