Ordinary Life (3 page)

She sighs, waits.

Finally, “Fine,” he says. She hears the door slam, the car start, and he is gone.

Mavis washes her face, brushes her teeth, then sits down at the edge of the tub with the box of Wheat Thins. She’d like a cup of coffee, she can smell it from Al having made it earlier. He doesn’t usually drink all he makes. He usually sets her cup out, too, the Café Du Monde one they brought back from New Orleans. But if she goes out into the rest of the house, she’ll lose what she’s started here. She’ll see dust on the coffee table, the morning paper lying messy on the kitchen table. The phone will ring, and she’ll answer it. No. She will stay here.

When she has finished with the crackers, Mavis stores them
back under the sink. She puts on a clean pair of underwear, then her bra and slip. She wants to rinse her blouse, so she won’t wear that quite yet. And if she’s not wearing the blouse, why, what would the sense be in wearing the skirt? Or nylons?

She feels a prickle ascend her spine. She removes her bra, hangs it over the shower rod. Then she washes the blouse, drapes it next to the bra, and settles down into the tub with her notebook.

“Dear Eileen,” she writes. “I know you’re dead.” And then she stops, stares straight ahead.

Outside, she hears a dog barking and the occasional sound of cars passing. A bush scrapes against the side of the house. It’s the rose of Sharon they planted four years ago, loaded now with buds that will bloom in August as though in compensation for the cold that will follow. Mavis hates the winter, wonders every year why she stays in a place that is so cold. It’s as though she has a stubborn belief it won’t happen again, the astounding windchill, the air so cold it feels like sheet metal pressed up against your face when you step outside. She used to bundle the children up so hard for school they looked like pupae. “Hell, forget the cold,
you’re
going to kill them,” Al had told her. “They’ll suffocate.”

She stays in Minnesota, she supposes, because the fall is so beautiful. It sabotages her every year, makes her forget about what is to come. Last year, looking at the leaves when she was driving, she’d had an accident. She’d run into a lamppost on the side of the freeway, knocked it down. The car needed major repairs, she was unharmed, they were charged by the state for the cost of the lamp. “For Christ’s sake, Mavis,” Al had grumbled, paying the bill. “Keep your eyes on the road from now on, will you?” She had put a bowl of Wheatena before him, vowed out loud that she would,
knew that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t help it, the leaves were so violently beautiful, and so short lasting. She wished the foliage would work in reverse, that you could see colors most of the time, the uniform green for only a few short weeks. But who could endure such richness? Surely people would go crazy from so much beauty. Or else they’d get used to it, and then ignore it, another form of craziness.

Mavis bites at her pen, looks at what she wrote, crosses it out. Well, she’s not a writer. What in heaven’s name did she think, bringing a notebook in here? She reaches up for her blouse, feels to see if it has dried at all. Not yet. Perhaps she could hang it out the window. She stands up in the tub, raises the window beside it. No. It won’t work. Nothing to hang it on. Too bad there’s no clothesline, she misses clotheslines.

She lies down in the tub again, crosses her ankles, closes her eyes, and a memory floats into her head like a dream. She is at a nightclub she and Al used to go to. They are dancing, Al in his good blue suit, she in her strapless white formal and satin high heels. She had just learned that afternoon that she was pregnant; and as Al held her close she whispered that the rabbit had died. Al had stopped dancing, held her slightly away from himself. Then, sick-looking with joy, he’d carefully escorted her back to their little round table with the lit lamp and the fancy glass ashtray holding gold-tipped matches. “I can still
dance
, Al,” she’d said.

“Later, you can,” he’d said. “After nine months.” And then, “It is nine months, isn’t it?”

She’d smiled yes.

“I all of a sudden didn’t know!” he’d said. “I feel … Jesus, Mavis. A baby is in you!”

She’d nodded. “I know.”

Later that night, after they’d gone to bed, Al had pulled her gently to him so that her back was against his chest. He’d raised her hair to kiss the back of her neck. “Mavis?” he’d said. “I think … I think you’re a miracle. A kind of miracle.” There was such reverence in his tone.

She’d turned to face him. “Everybody has babies, Al,” she’d said, laughing, a little embarrassed.

“No.”

“All right,” she’d said, turning back over, letting him have it. She was twenty-five then. How can she be seventy-nine now? It occurs to her that she thought she would always be … oh, thirty-two. She would grow older, but she would be thirty-two. She could be
ninety
, but she would still be thirty-two, and she would set the table and all her family would come when she called, the children bumping into one another as they came through the kitchen door, Al following closely behind. His sleeves would be rolled up and he would be smiling, because he was hungry and dinner was there.

Mavis opens her notebook, then closes it again. She climbs out of the tub, gets an Orangina and a candy bar and the top library book, then climbs back in.

She hears Al come in the front door, checks her watch. Five-thirty. He couldn’t have eaten already. He knocks at the door. “Mavis? You still in there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I wondered … would you like to have dinner with me?”

“I can’t come out, Al. I don’t want to. I’m fine.”

“Well, I know, but you have to eat. You must be starving.”

“I’ve got food in here.”

“What food?”

She is embarrassed to tell him. People’s small passions, always embarrassing, she supposes. “Just … I’ve got things to eat, Al,” she says.

“Well, you know, Mavis, I was thinking. If you did go away on a retreat, you’d go out to eat somewhere, right?”

She considers this. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“And we’d be talking, too; if you went away, you’d call me, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, of course I’d call you.”

“So let’s eat together, Mavis. Just pretend you’re out to dinner and calling me.”

“Now, you listen to me, Al, I’m getting pretty tired of telling you that I’m
doing
something in here! Oh, you just can’t stand it that I’m not there all the time! You and Big Jim are just alike. If Eileen went to the corner mailbox, why, he’d have to come too. Otherwise he’d be at the window watching for her the whole time. Just like a little dog!”

“Wait a minute,” Al says.

“What?”

“I meant, maybe … couldn’t I come in there and eat with you?”

“Oh!” She sits down on the toilet seat, thinks. Then she says, “I don’t think you’d like the food I have.”

“I’ll bring dinner,” he says. “I got some stuff at the store. I’ll
make
dinner.”

“Well, I—” She stops, astonished. He has never once made dinner. “I think that would be very nice, Al.”

“Okay. So I’ll just go fix it now.”

“All right. And Al? When you bring it in, could you bring me one of my dresses?”

“Your addresses?”

“No, one of my
dresses
. One of my summer
dresses
. I need something else to wear.”

“Oh! Sure,” he says, happily. And his happiness makes Mavis wonder if letting him in is the right decision. But when he knocks again and she opens the door to him holding a tray, her favorite blue shift lying across one of his arms, she is glad to see him.

“Come in,” she says, stepping aside. What is this she is feeling, shyness? Can it be?

For his part, he has combed his hair—Mavis sees the careful wet lines when he sets their dinner down on the floor. The tray is covered with a dish towel. A surprise, then. He hands her the dress. “Here,” he says. “Looks like you need this, all right.”

She gasps, clutches at her chest, looks down at herself, embarrassed. She is still in her slip. “For heaven’s sake,” she says. “I forgot.”

“Well.” He lifts the towel. He has brought Chinese food: the plates hold chicken chow mein, rice, and egg rolls.

“Oh my,” Mavis says. “Isn’t this nice!”

Al points to the egg rolls. “You can buy these,” he says. “Right in the grocery store. And then you just microwave them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And of course, the chow mein, it’s just in a can. Heat it right up.”

“Right.”

“The rice, I got at Chen’s. Stopped on the way home.”

“Well, it’s all very good looking. Thank you, Al.”

“Okay.” He looks around. “Do we eat on the floor?”

“Oh.” Mavis looks around as well, then puts the tray on the lid of the toilet. “Okay?”

They kneel on either side of the tray, sit back on their heels. “Not the most comfortable thing,” Mavis says.

Al shrugs. “So. What have you been doing in here, Mavis?” He eyeballs the padded tub, the stack of magazines and books. “Reading?”

The egg rolls are still frozen in the middle. Mavis removes the bite she’d taken from her mouth, puts it on the side of her plate.

“You don’t like it?” Al asks.

She smiles apologetically.

“Well, they were on sale,” he says.

“It’s okay.”

“Chow mein’s good, though, huh?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So have you been reading, Mavis?”

“Well, I’ve mostly been thinking.”

“About what?”

“About … whatever I want, Al. Do you know, it feels like I have never in my life been able to do that. It feels like I’ve been so … I don’t know. Busy. Distracted. I just wanted to have a sense of …” She looks up at him, helpless to explain.

“Mavis, are you—” He puts his fork down, takes a breath in. “You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?” He leans slightly away from her, focusing, Mavis knows. His bifocals need replacing.

“No!”

“Well, I told someone about what you’re doing. Harriet Bencher. And she asked were we having trouble. You know. And I said, well hell,
I
didn’t think so. And
she
says, ’Al. Wake up and smell the coffee. Mavis wants to leave you. This is the first step.’ I says, ‘You’re nuts, Harriet.’ Which she is. But it got me thinking.”

“First of all,” Mavis says, feeling the heat of her indignation rise up in her neck, causing a sensation close to choking. “I have no idea in the wide, wide world why you would go and
tell
someone. Especially Harriet, who has such a big mouth.” Harriet volunteers at the hospital with Al. Mavis has never met her and never wants to. “I don’t see why this can’t just be between you and me,” Mavis continues. “It’s just between you and me—and not even very much you!”

“I was scared, Mavis.”

“Oh, you just couldn’t wait to tell Harriet.”

“I’m telling you I was scared! This is not normal behavior!”

She stands. “I’ll tell you what, Al. I think I would just like you to go now.”

He looks up at her.

“Yes. You just go on, now. I would like to be alone.”

“Fine.” He takes the tray, goes out the door, and she locks it behind him.

Two mornings later, Al comes to the door. “Mavis, you won’t believe who’s on the phone.”

“I don’t care who’s on the phone. I don’t want to talk on the phone.” Though she and Al have made up—albeit with a door between them—she still does not want to talk on the phone. She and Al have come to an agreement. She will stay in the bathroom three more days, he will bring her whatever food and clothing she wants. Period.

But now he knocks again, saying, “It’s the Chuck
Lok
envitz show! You know? On channel thirty-seven?”

She stares at the door.

“Mavis?”

“I heard you. Very funny, Al.”

“I’m not kidding, Mavis. I am not kidding you.”

“Why would Chuck Lokenvitz be calling me?”

“Well, it’s not Chuck himself, honey. It’s a producer. That’s how they do it. But someone must have called the show about you.”

“Oh, they did. And I wonder who that someone could be. I just wonder who.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“I know who it was. It was that damn Harriet.”

“I suppose it might have been.”

“You suppose!”

“Mavis, they’re on the phone! The last guest that was on there went straight to
Op
rah!”

She opens the door. “I told you a million times we should get a portable!” She comes out into the hall, which, after four days in the bathroom, seems immense. She takes a few steps, then stops.

“Just take a message,” she tells Al, and goes back into the bathroom. She closes the door, feels the return of a kind of safety.

“Take a
message?
” Al says.

“Yes. Tell them I’ll be out in three days. I’ll call them back.”

“Mavis,” Al says through the crack. “Mavis. It’s the
Chuck Lokenvitz
show!”

“I don’t care a thing about it,” Mavis says, and sniffs. Where she has been, there is no Chuck Lokenvitz. Or Oprah Winfrey. There are her children, plumply young again, sitting in a busy circle in the sandbox and dressed in corduroy overalls and the tiny cardigan sweaters Eileen knit for them every Christmas. There is
The Ed Sullivan Show
on the little brown TV, all of the family watching, Ellie kneeling before Mavis so that she can have her hair put up in pink foam-rubber rollers. There is Eileen, sitting across from her at a booth in Woolworth’s, sharing a piece of strawberry pie.

“Well, fine,” Al says. “I’ll just go tell the Chuck Lokenvitz show
that you’re much too busy to talk to them.” And then, “You know I’m not kidding, right?”

“Yes, I know, Al,” she says, and climbs back into the tub, unwraps her last candy bar. The hell with Chuck Lokenvitz.

Mavis’s father was a mailman, delivered letters by horse cart at first. This is what she thinks about now, chewing the candy bar slowly, making it last. Her father changed into a baggy gray sweater and brown leather slippers every night when he came home, then sat at the kitchen table to listen to her and Eileen talk about school. He could sew better than their mother could, repaired all the girls’ rips. He could sing like an opera star. He died of a stroke when he was sitting at that same kitchen table. “Whew,” he’d said. “What a
head
ache I’ve got all of a sudden.” And then he had neatly dropped dead, right before the astonished faces of Mavis, Eileen, and their mother. “For heaven’s sake, Arthur,” her mother had said at first. “Don’t do that.” And then, still holding her mixing spoon, she had bent over him and screamed, which neither of the girls had ever heard before. That was the worst part, that scream.