Read Ordinary Life Online

Authors: Elizabeth Berg

Ordinary Life

Praise for
Ordinary Life

“The beauty of Berg’s stories is that she leaves us wanting more, wondering where the characters go from here.”


The Boston Globe

“The facing of life’s difficulties, and the hope that they can be relieved by those around us, is the nicest characteristic of Berg’s writing.”


The Washington Post

“Quietly uplifting … Berg is a sensitive and controlled writer with an uncanny way of capturing how women think and what they say.”


USA Today

“A strong collection, sharply observed … with several outstanding stories.”


The Seattle Times

“Berg pays careful attention to crucial emotional turning points in the lives of her characters, chronicling these moments with subtlety and grace.”

—Baltimore
Sun

“[Berg] again demonstrates her forte in using the telling anecdote or the significant moment to quietly reveal character. Sure-handed and subtle, this volume is a reputation-builder.”


Boston Herald

“Lyrical from start to finish … Shaped by Berg’s artistic talents, these stories of ordinary people in ordinary situations are anything
but
ordinary.… The tales are remarkable on a number of levels.… Berg’s collection is truly special. Her stories are artfully and skillfully done, but she leaves no brush strokes, hers is a beautiful, but unobtrusive, style.”


Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Reading this collection is like being privy to one of these late-night conversations among women. You leave it feeling privileged, included, reassured by stories that are at once familiar and refreshingly different from your own.”


Book

“At her best, Elizabeth Berg is an impassioned portrayer of the rich and complex tapestry woven by the commonplace interactions of unremarkable people living out everyday lives.
Ordinary Life
 … is Elizabeth Berg at her best.… A reminder of the richness that abounds in each of our everyday lives.”


The Orlando Sentinel

“If there is a central core in our everyday life … it is relationships. Elizabeth Berg writes about them. Splendidly … Berg shows her mastery in the way she sneaks up on you, lulls you with a disarming subtlety … [a] unique collection of warmhearted stories.”


Rocky Mountain News

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright © 2002 by Elizabeth Berg

Reading group guide copyright © 2004 by Elizabeth Berg and The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York in 2002.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Random House Reader’s Circle and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Some of the stories in this work have been previously published in
Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, New Woman, Special Report
, and
Woman
.

www.randomhousereaderscircle.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berg, Elizabeth.
Ordinary life: stories / Elizabeth Berg.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-142-4
1. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.
2. Women—United States—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction, American.
4. Love stories, American. I. Title.
PS3552.E6996 074 2002
813’.54—dc21         2001041754

v3.1

Contents
Ordinary Life:
A Love Story

Mavis McPherson is locked in the bathroom and will not come out. The tub is lined with pillows and blankets. Under the sink, next to the extra toilet paper, there is an economy-sized box of Wheat Thins, a bowl of apples, and a six-pack of Heath bars. Against the wall, under the towel rack, is a case of Orangina, and next to that is a neat pile of magazines and three library books. A spiral-bound notebook and pen lie on top of the toilet tank. Hanging from the hook on the back of the door are several changes of underwear.

Mavis is on retreat, she tells her husband through the crack in the door when he comes home that evening. Al volunteers at St. Mary’s Hospital, dividing his time between delivering newspapers to patients and helping maintenance fix faulty equipment, though this is a secret from the administration—volunteers aren’t supposed to do that. Al’s mechanical skills are legendary, but he is not known for his sense of humor. “Come on, Mavis,” he sighs. “What’s for dinner?”

“You might as well go on over to Big Boy,” Mavis tells him. “I’m
not cooking dinner. I’m not coming out for a week or so. It’s nothing personal.” She leans her ear against the crack in the door, listening for his response.

She hears only the wheezy sounds of him breathing in and out. She’s afraid Al has emphysema, but he won’t go to a doctor. “See ’em enough at the hospital,” he always says. “Stuffy little bastards.” She tries to look through the crack in the door, sees a tiny slice of Al’s blue shirt, a piece of his ear. “Let me in, Mavis,” he finally says, rattling the doorknob. “I gotta use the can.”

“You know perfectly well we have another bathroom. You’ll have to use that.”

“I don’t like that one. And it doesn’t have a bathtub.”

“Well, I know that.”

“So how am I supposed to shower?” Al likes to shower in the evening, a characteristic Mavis has never liked, finding it somehow effeminate. Overall, though, she has few complaints. She loves Al dearly.

“You’ll have to ask the neighbors,” Mavis says. “Or maybe the Y. I’ll bet the Y would let you shower there.”

Silence. Then Al says, “What is this, Mavis, a fight? Is it a fight?”

She steps back, fingers the ruffled collar of her white blouse. “Why,
no
,” she says, a little surprised. “I just got an idea that I really want some time completely to myself. And I’m taking it. I don’t see the point in running off somewhere. We can’t afford it anyway. Can we?”

Nothing.

“So,” she says, “I’ll stay right here. I don’t need anything but some quiet. I want to be in a small room, alone, to just … relax, and not do anything else. I was thinking of the ocean, but this is fine.”

“Oh, boy. I’m calling the kids,” Al says. “And I’m calling Dr. Edelson or Edelman or whoever that robber is that you go to every twenty minutes. You’ve gone around the bend this time, Mavis. What have you got in there, Alzheimer’s? Is that it?” He knocks loudly at the door. “Mavis, have you lost your goddamn mind?”

Mavis goes to the mirror to look at herself, tightens one of her pearl studs that has loosened, then walks back to the door. “I am seventy-nine years old, Al,” she says softly, into the crack.

“What’s that?”

“I say I’m seventy-nine years old,” she says, louder.

He inhales sharply. “Aw, jeez. This is about my missing your
birth
day?”

“It’s not my birthday for five months, Al. Remember? I was born in December. In a blizzard. Remember?”

“Well, I’m calling the kids,” Al says. “Yes sir. All three of them. Right now.” She hears his voice moving down the hall. “And your doctor, too.”

“That’s not necessary,” Mavis calls out. And then, yelling, “Al? I’m not going crazy. I’m just thinking. I was going to tell you about this, but you …”

He can’t hear her. She sits down on the closed seat of the toilet, peels the wrapper off a candy bar. “I am seventy-nine years old,” she says aloud, and takes a bite. This is the beginning of what she wanted to say. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure what would come next, she figured it would just happen, naturally. She examines the candy bar as she chews. She has always liked this, looking at food while she eats it. Makes it taste better. She wonders how they get that curly little swirl on the top of every candy bar. It’s a nice touch, even though some machine did it and it is therefore
not sincere. She crosses her legs, gently swings the top one, then leans over to the side to inspect it. She used to have great legs. “Oh, honey,” Al had said the first time he undid her garters and pulled her nylons off. “Look at these gams.” He had kissed her thighs, and she blushed so furiously she thought surely he’d see it in the dark. They were on their honeymoon, in a cottage in the Adirondacks. Her hair had been long and honey blonde, pulled back at the sides by two tortoiseshell combs, curled under at the bottom in a pageboy. The Andrews Sisters were on the radio at the moment she lost her virginity, her white negligee raised high over her breasts, one comb fallen off and digging into her shoulder, though not unpleasantly. She shook so hard when Al entered her he wanted to stop, but she wouldn’t let him. “It’s fine, honey,” she said. “It just hurts.” Her fingers were balled into fists against his back and she uncurled them, tried to relax. She looked for a place on the ceiling to focus on. She’d concentrate on that, take her mind off things.

“I can wait,” Al had said. “Why don’t I wait?” He’d raised himself up, tried to look into her face. But she hid herself in his shoulder, embarrassed and silent, then giggling.

“I don’t think that helps, waiting,” she’d finally said. “You just go on ahead. It’s all right.”

Afterward, they’d made a nest of the blankets and pillows, faced each other in the dim light, spoke in low tones of all the things they wanted to do: candlelit dinners every Saturday night, four children, the biggest Christmas tree on the lot every year. They touched each other’s faces with the tips of their fingers, probed gently at the openings between each other’s lips. At breakfast the next morning, Al had said Mavis looked different. More womanly. She said she’d noticed exactly the same thing. He took her hand, she put down her fork, and they went back
to the bedroom. Already they had a special language, Mavis had thought, and the intimacy grounded her, fueled her. It hadn’t hurt so much the second time.

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