Authors: Elizabeth Collison
Always Ben would tell her he knew. “Yes,” he'd say. “They have told me.”
And always then Mrs. E would look away. Stare, turn dreamy, look back.
“They say I am beautiful. They say men fall at my feet.” She would lift her chin, meet his eyes. Again her sly smile. “They say I'm myself fond of men.”
Ben said he would never be sure how to reply. Yes? Yes, they have told me that too.
Ben worried about Mrs. Eberline. She has no one, he would say. There is no one she can tell her stories to. He thought maybe she needed our help.
Help, Ben? I'd say. Ben has not lived next door to Mrs. E as I have, he could not possibly know. But when I said no then, I did not think Mrs. E needed any more help, she was pretty good at helping herself, Ben just gave me a slow, sad smile. “It's a hard thing, Margaret,” he said, “to find you've been left all alone.”
And now Ben himself is no longer around.
Mrs. Eberline sits in my front room, head down. For a very long time she just sits. And I start to prepare myself then. While I cannot see what it is she is thinking, I can feel in her stillness something brewing.
Early the day of his flight, he cannot sleep. He rises quietly, slips on a jacket, steps outside. The sun is not up, thick fog has rolled in. He heads east. And at the third block, near a yard he cannot see, he hears a man calling for his dog. The voice sounds distant, it hangs midair.
It is the fog, he thinks. How strange it is walking in fog. You do not hear birdcall or traffic or the sound of your own shoes on pavement. Which is why the man's voice just now is surprising, attached as it is to nothing. “Brownie. Brownie.”
It is only the fog. Only a man out calling for his dog. But he thinks he will tell her, he will say how it was, this one voice before dawn. It is how it is with him now, he will say.
There are still things in a day he thinks he will tell her. From habit, from the way it was before. How the peonies in the side yard have all come up, the shoots like chicken feet clawing out of the ground. A funny way to come up, feet first. Or how the wisteria in the cottonwood has buds on it now. The vine thick as a python, has she noticed? It has climbed the cottonwood three
stories high. And the buds, he will say, you cannot imagine. Giant grape clusters of new buds, he will say.
Although in the end he does not. He no longer has stories to tell her. They neither of them have the heart for it.
Still Mrs. Eberline sits on my couch, and still she does not move. She is beginning to worry me and for the second time today I ask if she would like a glass of water.
It is all I can think to come up with. It is what people generally offer when they don't know what else to do with an unwelcome guest in their house, with someone, say, dormant and downcast hunched in the corner of their couch. Or possibly just silent and seething. Would you like a glass of water, may I get you some water? It's an excuse to head for the kitchen, to spend time there letting the tap run cold. And sometimes it works. When you return with the glass, it is possible your strange guest will be gone.
I do not wait for Mrs. Eberline to reply. I go for the water and when I come back I realize it was a mistake. Mrs. Eberline revived while I was away and she has brought out her tin of cigarillos. Mrs. Eberline is a smoker, lifelong. Her mother will not let her light up at home, so she smokes wherever she can, or even where she cannot, most specifically here on her visits. It is something we have discussed at length. No smoking allowed in my house. It is one of my few hard lines.
But before I can say, “Mrs. Eberline, what is that?” and point dramatically at the open tin, again at the unlit cigarillo now dangling from her fingers, she lifts her head and pulls me urgently back onto the couch. Her eyes narrow, a brow lifts. She takes a long breath, leans in.
“Missy,” she says up close to my face, wagging her Swisher Sweet at me. “Missy, we got to go git Ben.”
She takes me by surprise. I expected a fight on the no-smoking front. I expected more accusations about Ben. But git him? Has Mrs. E not been listening here? When I say Ben Adams has left, Mrs. E, what I mean is that he has left
me
. I've been dumped, Mrs. E. Do you not understand? We cannot just go off now and git him.
But Mrs. Eberline sees it differently. Or rather, she seems not to see it at all. Or hear anything, for that matter, I've just said. Something has shifted, distracting Mrs. E. She seems now no longer much even in the room. She sits very still, back straight. Her gaze grows distant, her eyes turn to dark flat disks. And I know then it is her sibyl stare, her look when she's feeling prophetic, when she feels a divination coming on.
She turns toward the window, toward the garage beyond. For a moment she only just stares. Then “Ben?” she says slowly, as though trying to make him out in dim light. “Ben,” she says again, now watching. She holds her breath, still watching. Then “Ben!” she cries. “Ben!” And eyes opening wide, she howls, “No!”
Flinching, she withdraws back into her hood. And rocking a little, holding herself, “Oh Ben,” she says, her voice a deep, frightening whisper, “oh Ben, you in terrible trouble.”
For a moment she goes on rocking. But then abruptly she stops, listens, watches. And turning her head to one side, as
though tracking now something new, “Or headin' for trouble,” she says, and stares trancelike a moment more.
Then shaking herself once, she faces me, eyes clear again and burning, “Missy,” she says, “Ben ain't got much time.” She takes a quick, anxious breath. “Somethin's 'bout to happen to that man, I seen it. More terrible than I can say.”
And in case then I somehow have missed her point, she raises her voice, moves in closer. “I'm sayin', missy, you got to go git Ben. Bring him back. Keep him here where we kin watch him.”
I look at Mrs. Eberline. Ben is in trouble? She seen it? And despite her pleas, despite my better self, I cannot help thinking not so fast here.
That is, there are things that need sorting out in all this, in this latest of Mrs. E's visions. And I try to work each one through. First, Mrs. Eberline, prophet though she believes herself to be, in fact is not often on target. That is to say almost never. It is not likely Ben actually is in trouble. Second, her exhortation just now to go save Ben clearly has her own interests at its heart. Third, and this is the deal breaker, I'm not sure I'm the one who should be saving Ben, assuming he actually needs saving, since it is not at all clear he would want me to.
So I tell Mrs. E I am not so sure about Ben. I say I think he is probably doing just fine. And, I add, to tell the truth I don't know it would work, having him back in my house again. I do not go into detail.
Mrs. Eberline looks out again at the garage. “It ain't got to be your house, missy,” she says. “You got choices.” She nods toward the window. “Ben Adams can stay in that there garage. You ain't even got to know the man's here.”
She turns to me, now vehement. “Ben is in danger, I'm tellin' you.”
I look back at Mrs. E as though considering. About the endangered Ben Adams.
Mrs. Eberline eyes me sternly, waggles again the Swisher Sweet. “You got a whole garage empty there, missy,” she says, and then starts rummaging in her pocket for a match.
I watch Mrs. Eberline, I should stop her. But now I'm thinking about what she's just said, so for her sake, I look out at my empty garage. And on track again now, I have to admit Mrs. Eberline has a point.
Which, to be fair, I am going to acknowledge to her. But I turn and find Mrs. E has gone back into her trance. She stares out the window where just now she's seen Ben. And “No, wait. missy,” she says, her eyes dark again, “now I'm seein' you.” She stares. “I mean to say I'm seein' Ben, and you is right there too.” Then shaking her head, “Looks like the both of you is in trouble.”
Pressing and pleading again, she moves closer, Ben Adams still her main concern. “Missy, you gotta save Ben. Bring him back where he be safe.”
I think about this. It is generous of Mrs. E to be seeing after Ben, except now I'm as well in the picture. “But Mrs. Eberline,” I say, “if I save Ben, who is going to save me?”
Mrs. E stares blankly. She shrugs. “Well I just reckon that's up to you.”
Then sitting forward, her voice rising, as though I still have not got the picture, “Missy,” she tells me, “you got to go git Ben. Ain't nobody else a'gonna.”
Having said her piece, Mrs. Eberline plumps herself back on
my couch. And watching me for my reply, she strikes her match and lifts it blazing, threatening to light up should I delay.
I try to think fast, I try to be fair. I could go find Ben, keep him safe here with me. His demands would be small, there is room, it's all true.
Mrs. Eberline holds the match aloft.
I study her face. The flame reflects in her crazed little eyes, and I know then it's an awful idea.
So “No,” I tell Mrs. Eberline. I am sorry, but no. “No, no. Ben will not be moving into my garage.”
Mrs. Eberline gives me a long, hostile look. She holds it a beat or two. And then aware of it or not, eyes steady still on me, she loosens her thumb and forefinger, letting the lighted match drop.
We both watch it fall in slow motion, bounce once on my couch, then roll onto the center cushion. And oddly, at first I am calm. The match lies sideways near the cushion's edge and looks like it is going out. Its light goes dim, shrinks in. No need to overreact here, I think. Or give Mrs. E that satisfaction.
But just then I see the match head starts again to grow bright, and beneath where it landed what looks like a large black ink stain spreads out in a menacing halo. The stain grows rapidly larger, the center dissolves to a glowing red rim. And as I watch, now pretty much spellbound, the perimeter suddenly cracks and erupts into a shocking orange flame.
Everything then happens fast. Before Mrs. E or I can move or try to put anything out, the cushion starts sending up thick dark smoke. Great licks of fire leap high.
“Mrs. Eberline!” I cry. “Now look what you've done!” And reaching for her glass of water, I hurl it into the flames.
The water splashes sideways toward Mrs. E. She jerks back out of the way. Then furious and snorting, she jolts to her feet and stomps brusquely off for the front door.
I myself run for more water. But on my return I see Mrs. E has stopped just outside and is glaring back from the top step. Still thinking of Ben, I suppose, not to mention herself, she points a bony finger in my direction. “It just mean of you, missy,” she cries. “You just a tall, mean old thing.”
Then, with my couch still burning and sending up smoke, she tells me what she always tells me, that I am going to die hard and lonesome.
Wednesday morning and there is more now to attend to than Mrs. E. More to do in a day than wait for her next risky visit. Mrs. Eberline at any rate is away just now, off with her black plastic trash bags, off to the empty bottles and cans and general discards she gathers.
Which actually, I should say, I'm assuming. For all I know, Mrs. Eberline at this moment is somewhere downtown on a corner declaiming my uncharitable heart. I do not know for a fact what Mrs. E is up to because I am not now around to catch her. I am instead myself away, at work at the sanatorium.
Where this morning things are seriously amiss. Joe Trout, for one, appears under a spell and has lost the elusive Trout Route. Sally Ann has herself misplaced Mr. Bones and wanders mute and desperate without him. Then in staff meeting just as the chandelier dimmed, “Look!” Celeste cried, gaping up. “They've returned!” After which, when we hurried back to our suites, we all found crumpled notes on our chairs, illegible and, more importantly, bloodied.
“It's all that Emmaline's fault,” Celeste says. “Really the girl knows no limits.” She is positively ruining the sanatorium for the rest of us.
Celeste, as usual, dramatizes. All of the above can be explained. But before any further detail, first a few points about contextâthat is, the sanatorium.
Which, to begin with, is no longer a sanatorium. We just say sanatorium here because that is what it once was, the Elmwood Sanatorium for Sunny Rest and Cure, a fashionable resort for the tubercular. A grand four-story stone building with cross-wings and turrets on one hundred acres of undulating plain. Once an elegant estate of sprawling bent-grass lawns, regal elms, bright meadows of columbine in spring. We had our own farm then, a post office as well, and a station where Silver Streak Pullmans rolled to a stop and stylish pale riders detrained.
But as I said, that is no longer the case. Years ago the sanatorium ceased being a sanatorium when the well-heeled ceased being tubercular. Streptomycin appeared, and soon the main hall here was locked up and abandoned. For years more it stood empty, its lovely green lawns turned fallow. After which, through a series of bank repossessions, the sanatorium was turned over to the state, who renamed it the Elmwood State Institution and moved in all state sorts of things. The medical facility for the nearby state prison, the state lab that tests rodents for rabies, a large wing for the state's crippled children, a whole floor where the state alcoholics detox. And in the basement a state cafeteria too, above a malodorous state steam tunnel.
Then it occurred to the state that the university in our town, being a state sort of university, could also use sanatorium quarters.
So we now have a faculty sabbatical lounge. And a wing for university-funded small business, incubator to emerging state jobs. Which is why I, Celeste, and the others are here, or rather, that is, the Project, university-funded and emerging as we all are.
The Project, very like the sanatorium, is not the real name for where we work. To be exact, we work for Steinem Associates, Unified, a publisher of children's early readers. But our director, Dr. H. S. Steinem, prefers that we just say the Project. It makes us sound more academic, he believes, not so pushy and profit-minded.