Other People's Lives (13 page)

Very few lights were on in Maria's apartment, but misshapen candles flickered everywhere. Through their uncertain glow, Louise could not tell whether the people and objects spread out in equal crowded disarray were an indication of some great, nearly secret carousing, or whether, having laid themselves out beside batik hangings and wine bottles, both people and objects were spent.

“Filthy dishes—exactly what I can't stand!” Maria would certainly say momentarily; and looking at the mounds of unraveling, hand-crafted projects, Louise was reminded of Patient Bazaars at Birch Hill.

“Chicken parts, twenty-nine cents a pound! I found the sale in a new supermarket opening!” Maria called out triumphantly, diving into a large grocery bag. Still in the narrow entranceway, behind both Louise and Matthew, she stood in the dim light, waving a package of chicken high above her head like a torch. “And so many opened-up wine bottles!” she said, immediately snapping on a light and sweeping through the room. “That's what I'll do! I'll make for everyone
coq au vin.
Only I think definitely I don't have enough mushrooms. What do you think? Quickly! Who has some?”

“Maria!” they all called out, jolted by the light, but happy to see her. Joan squinted and, stretching sleepily, said, “I think you got a call from the hospital. But I wasn't the one who answered, so I'm not sure.” And Arthur, who managed to get up at once, shaded his eyes comically, saying, “Again mushrooms? That's the first thing she requisitioned every time she conquered a country.”

Maria put down her bundles and walked around the living room blowing out all the candles. “You don't ever believe me,” she said, already carrying off overflowing ashtrays and bowls filled with apple cores and nutshells, “but it's true. You have only to look for specials, on sales, in big supermarkets and it's much cheaper. Even if it's not near you, if you see it—notice it? You just stop. From the bus, it's naturally easier—you just run out. From the car, a big pain in the ass because of double parkings. But this chicken I got—I don't know where—on the East Side someplace. When I was dropping off Julie.”

Large pots of leftover food had been set down carelessly throughout the room, and over them floated the smell of burnt-out candles. It was exactly what Louise had expected: after so many hours of just sitting, she now did not know where to move. Even Reba Axelrod stood up slowly. Her face looked pink from the wind or from sleep, and running her finger through a wedge of runny cheese, she tried, too suddenly, to speak briskly.

“You're right, Maria!” she said breathlessly, trying to avoid a pot of Greek beans. “It's what I've been telling them about for months. All we have to do is form a food co-op. Food collective.
You
know. Every week—or depending on how we decide to set it up—somebody else, very early in the morning, can go up to the market at Hunt's Point. The savings are incredible! And besides, you find out all about these fantastic new vegetables.” Reba widened her eyes and luxuriously licked at her cheesy finger as if she were right then and there savoring a vegetable whose taste she had never before known.

“Glasses?” Maria said, back in the living room, her eyes searching, her hands out. “Cups? No? Nothing? You used paper? Good! Ah! Wineglasses, I'll be very careful, don't worry. But what you'll do with all that cheese, I don't know.”

Reba said, “Come on, Maria! You're on my side. What do
you
think?”

Maria shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, it's already all so runny and ripe. You can't use it tomorrow, we better eat it tonight. Brie, in any case, you can't feed to the cat…Matthew! No TV! Come right now and help me dry! But be very careful—these are expensive, special wineglasses and anyway not ours.”

“Maria!” Reba pleaded. “You could save a lot of money! You
need
to—I mean, we
all
need to. What about it? All we have to do is get them organized.”

“That's right, Reba,” Arthur said. “That's the
Ober-sturmfüihrer.
She certainly can get them organized.”

In the kitchen Louise watched Maria bang down a cast-iron frying pan and fill it with cooking oil. “Onions!” she cried out wildly, half to herself. “But never mind, I'm sure I have at least
some.
”

“You see that?” Reba said, coming in to join her. “Do you have any idea how cheaply we could get them up there?”

“Now I'll maybe cry a little,” Maria said, rapidly peeling the onions. “Probably it's good for me. What do you think?” She turned around, and seeing that it was Reba who stood next to her, she sliced down hard on her chopping board and, tossing her head in the direction of the onions, said, “Hunt's Point! I anyway get up very early! And run out in a hurry to be with junkies! It's what I do all day. And always being careful to watch my purse! And where I have the car—for stealings! I don't for that need Hunt's Point!”

Joan yawned and, picking at the label of a wine bottle, said, “I think it
is
really dangerous up there. They had a whole series about it on television.”

Maria threw the onions and chicken parts into the pan and, muttering “God
damn
it!” as the fat spurted out, repeated, “Hunt's Point! Exactly what I don't absolutely need—a bus-driving holiday!” She climbed up a stepladder, shoving around cans of food with the same frenzy which had woken Louise so early that same morning. “Bay leaves I know I definitely somewhere have, but
mushrooms…
Well! All right! Too bad, we'll have to use cans and hope for no botulisms.”

“A bus-driving holiday,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “I can see why that's not for you. But what about a Firemen's Ball? The helmets, the boots, the uniforms—just for old times' sake.”

On her way to the bathroom, Joan wobbled a bit in her clogs and called out, “Oh, Christ, Arthur! Don't pay attention to him, Maria. He's really disgusting.”

“He is,” Maria agreed, and from the top rung of the stepladder began laughing so that she had to grasp the sink.

“Why?” Arthur said, smiling. He carried in two of the big clay pots and emptied them into the garbage. “Why am I disgusting? I'm only giving her the encouragement to remember. Isn't that what you pay thirty-five dollars an hour for? With the meter running?” He held on to the arms of the stepladder just below where Maria was standing, and said, “What do
they
know, Maria,
liebchen?
A bunch of skinny Jewish broads! Come on down and tell it all to Uncle Fritz before the U-boat comes back for you.”

“Oh, shit!” Maria said, trying to steady herself, though, with her hand on her face, she was laughing and blushing. “You people!”

“Ah
hah!
” Arthur wagged his finger in the air. “‘You people!' Notice that?
You
people! Already she's separating out the population.”

Reba said, “I'm serious, Maria. You shouldn't dismiss it so easily, you're not being fair. For one thing, you'd be terrific at it—it involves a lot of bargaining. That's the whole point of these wholesale markets. You buy in huge quantities and you bargain for the best price. You'd be absolutely perfect for it! I can just
see
you.”

I did always exchanges from when I was very little, Maria had said. When I was
very
skinny.

“Bay leaves I have,” she said now, throwing down a package. “Also some thyme. A pinch, only. A pitch? Mushrooms from cans, not great, but OK, we can use it. Wine-too much is already out, we'll drink some. What else? I can make noodles, maybe, or rice, but French bread would definitely be better. Also later for the Brie. What do you think?”

“If you're really against going up there early in the morning, we could use your apartment to store things,” Reba said, and as she widened her eyes and licked her lips Louise thought of a child embarking in secret on a grownups' project.

Joan, in her clogs, came clattering back from the bathroom. “Shit,” she said crankily, pulling and picking at the threads of her shift. “This thing has split ends, I swear it. And it never even hung right. What should I do next time, Maria? Use a different pattern?”

“I don't
use
ever patterns. It's not what I got used to and now, too bad, I have no patience. Come here to the light and let me see it.” Still on the stepladder, she held out her hand and waved it like a traffic cop. Or maybe, Louise thought, like a crane-driver: I drove then a giant something, Maria had said. It was very noisy.

Stepping into the full bright light of the kitchen, Joan said, “My God, Maria! It smells fantastic in here! And you did it in about three minutes. What did you do?”

“I didn't yet put in the wine, it will then smell
more
fantastic. Matthew didn't yet set the table…Matthew! Come here!
Quickly,
baby, angel! I think I'll maybe send him down for French bread. Italian—it doesn't matter…Look, Joan,” she said, stabbing the material. “Look right here. It's not I think the pattern, it's you. You did here a hemming stitch, but it's a seam. For a seam, you must do a backstop—a backstitch…Entirely different!…Matthew! Take from my purse one dollar and not more. I think around the corner the little Spanish store is maybe open still, I hope. I can show you later a backstitch, Joan. It's very easy, no problem…Matthew! Get your coat and go! Quickly! You have still to set the table.”

Joan observed lazily, “I think it started to rain again. For a change.” She stretched and leaned her head all the way back so that her long, dark hair, in a pony tail for the freedom of the day, reached nearly to the seat of her dungarees. There was a certain restless languor about her still; she looked, for the moment, the way she must have years before—a teenager mooning around her mother's kitchen. Was this what Julie did as soon as she got home?

“A raincoat, Matthew!” Maria called out, but the door had already slammed.

“I'll set the table,” Louise said, but thought, really, that she was the one who should have gone out. She had still not taken off her coat and felt as if she alone were standing there, caught in a black-and-white frame while everyone else was moving around in color. Reba, for instance, was plumping up and down on her heels as if she were looking for something; perhaps her feet had merely fallen asleep. Still doing this, looking like someone on a pogo stick, she said, “Melissa won this
enormous
fish tank. I don't mean a goldfish bowl—which die as soon as they hit the house anyway. It's a
tank.
Huge! I told her we have no room for it, but she
won
it. How can you argue that with a six-year-old?”

Maria said, “It's what Matthew has. You keep it on the window sill. It fits.”

“That's what Bert told her. But the thing
is,
Maria, in her room the window sill is right on top of the radiator. We'd have poached tropical fish.”

“Take it to the country,” Joan said. She had taken her hair out altogether and was now braiding it listlessly.

“They'll
die
in the country. And then she won't go to the toilet. That's what happened every time we had to flush down the goldfish.”

Maria poured wine into the pan, popped a mushroom into her mouth, and as the winy chicken smell rose up through the room, said, “Salt pork,
that's
what I should really have. Or bacon grease.” She shrugged her shoulders, clanked an oversized lid on the pan, and said, “Reba, it's exactly what Matthew has. I already told you. You put down on the window sill some asbestos, aluminum. It works. It's only all that fish business is completely crazy—much too expensive. So—if they die, too bad. No more.”

Joan said, “Maria, really you should have
been
here today. Maybe Matthew would have won some fish. And anyway,
everybody
missed you.”

“I know,” Maria said grimly. “I met downstairs Larry Kopell.”

“Don't tropical fish—the mothers eat the babies?” Reba asked. “I'm not sure I want Melissa to see that.”

“You can make then a terrarium, it's the other thing you can do with a fish tank,” Maria said. “Some other things, too.” She was counting out plates and utensils, pulling things out from shelves and drawers. “We'll set this table in here. A little crowded, but all right…Reba, is your husband coming?”

Joan said, “You're wrong, Reba. How else do you begin explaining about death? It's better if they see it first with things like fish.”

Reba began going up and down on her heels again and said, “Maria! What a terrific ideal I
never
would have thought of something like that! You should write a book about it.
You
know—all your sort of household hints and your projects! And then we could give out a copy to everyone who joins our food co-op!”

Joan, looking serious, said, “I know it sounds brutal, but actually it means more with animals. It takes on more reality—the way farm children learn about it.”

“Funny,” Arthur said, and smiled up at Louise so that she began having trouble with the place settings. “That's not what
I
heard that farm children learn about naturally.”

“What do you think, Maria?” Reba asked excitedly. “Isn't it a good idea?”

“What does
she
think!” Arthur nodded his head in mock gloomy derision. “What do you expect her to think about a goldfish? She was once running up gas bills on Grandpa. And don't forget—those were the days before Easy-Off.”

“Arthur!” Joan shrieked.

“Oh, it's all right, Joan,” Maria said, looking up in annoyance. “He does it only to provoke. And anyway, he's part right. I can't think about it the same way you do. I had, when I was ten, in my street, to pull out the dead bodies. From the houses, buildings that were, I don't know—collapsed. First, really, to take them out and make sure. Because after bombings and so on there were still live people.
Not
so many. Some. Reba, if your husband is coming, Louise can put out now another place.”