“This is it,” said Millie, standing. She picked up the skillet, and taking a serving spoon, scraped and swirled up the hardened, flat-bottomed remnants. “Here,” she said, holding it all in front of Hane. “Open up.”
Hane scowled. “Come on, Millie.”
“Just one last spoonful. Tomorrow I cook fresh.”
Hane opened his mouth, and Millie fed him gently, carefully, because the spoon was large.
Afterward they both sat in the living room and Hane read aloud a passage from 2 Thessalonians. Millie stared off like a child at the figurines, the clown and the ballerina, and thought about Ariel, traveling to foreign countries and meeting people. What it must be like to be young today, with all those opportunities. Once, last semester, before she’d left for England, Ariel had said, “You know, Mom, there’s a girl in my class at Rutgers with exactly your name: Mildred Keegan. Spelled the same and everything.”
“Really?” exclaimed Millie. Her face had lit up. This was interesting.
But Ariel was struck with afterthought. “Yeah. Only … well, actually she flunked out last week.” Then Ariel began to laugh, and had to get up and leave the room.
AT NINE O’CLOCK, after she had peeled the labels off an assortment of tin cans, and rinsed and stacked them, Millie went to pick up John Spee at the train station.
“So what all did you do in the city?” asked Millie, slowing for a red light and glancing at the boy. She had left the house in too much of a rush, and now, looking quickly in the rearview mirror, she attempted to smooth the front of her hair, which had fallen onto her forehead in a loose, droopy tangle. “Did you see a play? I hear there’s some funny ones.” Millie loved plays, but Hane didn’t so much.
“No, didn’t feel like buzzing the bees for a play.” He said ply.
“Oh,” said Millie. Her features sagged to a slight frown. Buzzing the bees. Ariel had used this expression once. Money, honey, bees, Ariel had explained impatiently. Get it? “Did you go down to Battery Park and see the Statue of Liberty? It’s so beautiful since they cleaned it.” Not that Millie had seen it herself, but it was in all the newsmagazines a while back, and the pictures had made it seem very holy and grand.
The light turned green, and she swung the car around the corner. At night this part of New Jersey could seem quiet and sweet as a real hometown.
“I just walked around and looked at the buildings,” said John, glancing away from her, out the car window at the small darkened business district of Terracebrook. “I went to the top of the Empire State Building, and then I went back and went to the top again.”
“You went twice.”
“Twice, yeah. Twice.”
“Well, good!” Millie exclaimed. And when they pulled into the driveway, she exclaimed it again. “Well, good!”
“SO HOW WAS the city?” boomed Hane, rising stiff and hearty, so awkwardly wanting to make the boy feel at home that he lunged at him a bit, big and creaky in the joints from having been sitting and reading all evening.
“Fine, thank you,” said John, who then went quickly to his room.
Millie gave Hane a worried look, then followed and knocked on John’s door. “John, would you like some supper? I’ve got a can of soup and some bread and cheese for a sandwich.”
“No, thank you,” John called through the door. Millie thought she heard him crying — was he crying? She walked back into the living room toward Hane, who gave her a shrug, helpless, bewildered. He looked at her for some reassuring word.
Millie shrugged back and walked past him into the kitchen. Hane followed her and stood in the doorway.
“I guess I’m not the right sort of person for him,” he said. “I’m not a friendly man by nature. That’s what he needs.” Hane took off his glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt.
“You’re a stack of apologies,” said Millie, kissing him on the cheek. “Here. Squash this can.” She bent over and put a rinsed and label-less can near his shoe. Hane lifted his foot and came down on it with a bang.
THE NEXT MORNING was Friday, and John Spee wanted to go into the city again. Millie drove him to catch the ten-o-two. “Have a nice time,” she said to him on the platform. “I’ll pick you up tonight.” As the train pulled up, steamy and deafening, she reminded him again about the half-price tickets for Broadway shows.
Back at the house, Millie got out the Hoover and began vacuuming. Hane, who had no classes on Friday, sat in the living room doing a crossword puzzle. Millie vacuumed around his feet. “Lift up,” she said.
In John Spee’s close and cluttered room she vacuumed the sills, even vacuumed the ceiling and the air, before she had to stop. All around the floor there were matchbooks from Greek coffee shops and odd fliers handed out on the street: Live Eddie; Crazy Girls; 20 % off Dinner Specials, now until Easter. Underwear had been tossed on the floor, and there were socks balled in one corner of the desk.
Millie flicked off the Hoover and began to tidy the desktop. This was at one time to have been her business headquarters, and now look at it. She picked up the socks and noticed a spiral notebook underneath. It looked a little like a notebook she had been using for her correspondence course, the same shade of blue, and she opened it to see.
On the first page was written, Crazy People I Have Met in America. Underneath there was a list.
1. Asian man in business suit waiting on subway platform. Screaming.
2. Woman in park walking dog. Screaming. Tells dog to walk like a lady.
3. In coffee shop, woman with food spilling out of her mouth. Yells at fork.
Millie closed the notebook quickly. She was afraid to read on, afraid of what number four might be, or number five. She put the notebook out of her mind and moved away from the desk, unplugged the Hoover, wound up the cord, then collected the odd, inside-out clumps of clothes from under the cot and thought again of her garbage business, how she had hoped to run it out of this very room, how it seemed now to have crawled back in here — her poor little business! — looking a lot like laundry. What she had wanted was garbage, and instead she got laundry. “Ha!” She laughed out loud.
“What?” called Hane. He was still doing the crossword in the living room.
“Not you,” said Millie. “I’m just going to put some things in the wash for John.” She went downstairs to the laundry room, with its hampers of recyclable rags, its boxes of biodegradable detergent, its cartons of bottles with the labels soaked off them, the bags of aluminum foil and tins. This was an office, in a way, a one-woman room: a stand against the world. Or for the world. She meant for the world.
Millie flicked on the radio she kept propped on the dryer. She waited through two commercials, and then the news came on: The garbage barge was heading back from Louisiana. “I’ll bet in that garbage there’s a lot of trash,” she wagered aloud. This was her distinction between garbage and trash, which she had explained many times to Hane: Garbage was moist and rotting and had to be plowed under. Trash was primmer and papery and could be reused. Garbage could be burned for gas, but trash could be dressed up and reissued. Retissued! Recycled Kleenex, made from cheap, recyclable paper — that was a truly viable thing, that was something she had hoped to emphasize, but perhaps she had not highlighted it enough in her initial materials. Perhaps people thought she was talking about garbage when she was talking about trash. Or vice versa. Perhaps no one had understood. Certainly, she had neglected to stress her best idea, the one about subliminal advertising on soap operas: having characters talk about their diseases and affairs at the same time that they peeled labels off cans and bundled newspapers. She was sure you could get programs to do this.