Certainly I'd do any heavy lifting she asked for, but after our first couple years there really wasn't much of it, as the lawn care and hedging and the gutters and the snowblowing were contracted out, and though I could afford a housekeeper Rita ended up looking after the kitchen and bathrooms and the laundry and pressing, the only thing I did for her diligently being the food shopping, enjoying the early Saturday morning stroll down the aisles, ticking off items on the list she'd written out on the back of an old utility bill, rapt in the specter of that week's glorious meals.
One morning late in our relationship and maybe the thing that finally did us in, I returned from the supermarket to find her still in bed with her night shades on and aired some vague jackass comment about maybe getting something done today.
She popped up like a viper and laid into me like she'd been itching to do daily for a decade at least, saying how the only time ever did something for her or anyone else without grousing or complaining or with a sour puss on was when there was a distinct possibility of some benefit to me, how in that way I was maybe — no, definitely — the most trivially needy, self-centered person she had ever met, that if she were verily on her deathbed and it was the lunch hour I probably couldn't help but ask her how she prepared her special egg salad with the diced black olives and sweet pickles and then bring the mixing bowl into the bedroom for a full-on demonstration.
That kind of smarted, to be sure, and as I went into a tortured and convoluted defense about trickle-down beneficiaries of a person's self-interest (I'm no Reaganite, being rabid about nothing, but still the theory has a natural attraction for me, given that the trickling aspect is just my sort of "work"), she stepped out of bed and came up from behind, tapping my shoulder, and whacked me square in the face with her pillow as I turned to make a point. It didn't hurt so much, of course, being more a shock than anything else, but this suddenly blood-thirsty look in her usually nurturing huge brown eyes did stun me into silence, and I'm not so sure she wouldn't have wielded whatever she grabbed first that morning, be it a pillow or a bat.
And even though there's probably no better time to go kissing up to her than now, when she's just cut loose from Richie and knocking about the house alone and maybe against all good judgment thinking fuzzily about us, this present near future of me standing here on the rickety back stoop of Rita's shotgun house holds a potentially dangerous outcome, and not because I think she might haul off and bonk me again. The reason is that she might just be tempted enough to let me have another taste, the circumstance of which, if it can't sustain, will certainly leave me in a desolated state. Theresa in her own stubborn manner has allowed me to remain in the rare air of some seriously aromatic denial (for which My Declining Self has been grateful, every day and every minute), but there's another part of me that doesn't care anymore if I can't help but see the loose grit and grub of this life, and risk something more intense than irritation or annoyance. It's the question of participation, again, though this time I'm slotted to practice it in a form wholly singular, unbolstered, which you'd think would be the highest manifest pride of a full-blooded American guy like me but has long been my greatest dread, save final extinguishment itself.
I can barely press hard enough to ring the bell.
Nothing happens, and I'm going to ring again, but in the next moment I find myself mincing down the steps to flee before any flak bursts erupt, already thinking of how I'm going to be walking all night to get back home, when I hear Rita say in her loamy autumnal voice, "I'm here, Jerry, I'm here."
She is wearing a loose white cotton dress, with a pretty lace pattern at the neck, sort of South-of-the-Border style, the sight of this and her dark-hued beauty reminding me of those raven-haired senoritas in the westerns, not the lusty barmaid or wiz-ened hooker but the starry-eyed young village woman who endlessly carries jugs of water and wears a big silver cross and though captivated by the stoic gringo gunslinger come to save the town remains loyal in the end to her long-suffering peasant husband. But I'm no hero, and neither she nor her people ever needed any help, and if I had a hat I'd be holding it out for whatever lowly alms might be given, a ladle of water, a crust of bread, a slip of time beneath the shade tree out back, to gather myself before at last moving on.
"I don't mean to
bother you," I say, suddenly feeling ashamed of myself. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'll leave you alone."
"How did you get here? I don't see your car."
"Theresa dropped me off."
"But she's gone," she says, her voice riding a hard edge.
"I know. It's my fault. It was stupid and I'm going."
"I'll call Theresa at the house."
"She's gone on errands. She won't be home for a couple hours, at least."
"I can call you a taxi, then. I can do that for you."
"You don't have to."
"What, Jerry, are you really going to walk home along the Expressway? You'll get hit. You're not going to put that one on me. I'll call a cab now. You can wait right there if you want."
"Okay, then."
She, steps inside for what seems a long time, and enough for me to look around and notice that her garden is overgrown, the ground-hugging tomatoes spidery and wild for not having been regularly pinched back, the string beans and squashes too big for good eating, the basil and parsley long bolted and flowery, what almost everyone else's plot looks like late in the season but never Rita's, who kept her patch in the far western corner of my property looking like one of those serene, ultrarnanicured Japanese gardens, a miniaturized Eden of gently tended plants with their ripened issue gorgeously shining and pendant. Every summer but this one I waded daily through those rows, eating the vegetables right there, my roving live salad, Rita hardly able to make a full dish for my culling, though never in the least minding. She enjoyed the plain hard work of it (like with everything else she does), which is why the present sight disturbs me so, as if having to deal with guys like me and Riehie has steadily depleted her hardihood and forced her to run too long on low bat-tery; in fact as I look around it's all a bit forlorn, the small paint-flaked stoop unswept of dead bugs and leaves, the flower-pots empty save for hardened, white-speckled dirt, and I can't help but peer through the screen door to the counter of the tiny kitchen, weedy with mugs and plates, and mourn for her a little, knowing that this should be the golden period of Rita's life, being fifty and still beautiful, when she ought to be tasting the not-so-proverbial fruit of her good character and labors with a man she loves and who loves her back and is wise and generous enough not to waste another moment of her precious time.