“When?”
“Why, never. You should never sit on cold stone.” “When will you come to dinner?”
Mr. Belli’s livelihood rather depended upon his being a skilled inventor of excuses. “Any time,” he answered smoothly. “Except any time soon. I’m a tax man; you know what happens to us fellows in March. Yes sir,” he said, again hoisting out his watch, “back to the grind for me.” Still he couldn’t—could he?—simply saunter off, leave her sitting on Sarah’s grave? He owed her courtesy; for the peanuts, if nothing more, though there was more—perhaps it was due to her that he had remembered Sarah’s orchids withering in the icebox. And anyway, she was nice, as likeable a woman, stranger, as he’d ever met. He thought to take advantage of the weather, but the weather offered none: clouds were fewer, the sun exceedingly visible. “Turned chilly,” he observed, rubbing his hands together. “Could be going to rain.”
“Mr. Belli. Now I’m going to ask you a very personal question,” she said, enunciating each word decisively. “Because I wouldn’t want you to think I go about inviting just anybody to dinner. My intentions are—” her eyes wandered, her voice wavered, as though the forthright manner had been a masquerade she could not sustain. “So I’m going to ask you a very personal question. Have you considered marrying again?”
He hummed, like a radio warming up before it speaks; when he did, it amounted to static: “Oh, at my age. Don’t even want a dog. Just give me TV. Some beer. Poker once a week. Hell. Who the hell would want me?” he said; and, with a twinge, remembered Rebecca’s mother-in-law, Mrs. A. J. Krakower, Sr., Dr. Pauline Krakower, a female dentist (retired) who had been an audacious participant in a certain family plot. Or what about Sarah’s best friend, the persistent “Brownie” Pollock? Odd, but as long as Sarah lived he had enjoyed, upon occasion taken advantage of, “Brownie’s” admiration; afterwards—finally he had told her not to telephone him any more (and she had shouted: “Everything Sarah ever said, she was right. You fat little hairy little bastard”). Then; and then there was Miss Jackson. Despite Sarah’s suspicions, her in fact devout conviction, nothing untoward, very untoward, had transpired between him and the pleasant Esther, whose hobby was bowling. But he had always surmised, and in recent months known, that if one day he suggested drinks, dinner, a workout in some bowling alley … He said: “I was married. For twenty-seven years. That’s enough for any lifetime”; but as he said it, he realized that, in just this moment, he had come to a decision, which was: he would ask Esther to dinner, he would take her bowling and buy her an orchid, a gala purple one with a lavender-ribbon bow. And where, he wondered, do couples honeymoon in April? At the latest May. Miami? Bermuda? Bermuda! “No, I’ve never considered it. Marrying again.”
One would have assumed from her attentive posture that Mary O’Meaghan was raptly listening to Mr. Belli—except that her eyes played hookey, roamed as though she were hunting at a party for a different, more promising face. The color had drained from her own face; and with it had gone most of her healthy charm. She coughed.
He coughed. Raising his hat, he said: “It’s been very pleasant meeting you, Miss O’Meaghan.”
“Same here,” she said, and stood up. “Mind if I walk with you to the gate?”
He did, yes; for he wanted to mosey along alone, devouring the tart nourishment of this spring-shiny, parade-weather, be alone with his many thoughts of Esther, his hopeful, zestful, live-forever mood. “A pleasure,” he said, adjusting his stride to her slower pace and the slight lurch her stiff leg caused.
“But it did seem like a sensible idea,” she said argumentatively. “And there was old Annie Austin: the living proof. Well, nobody had a better idea. I mean, everybody was at me: Get married. From the day Pop died, my sister and everybody was saying: Poor Mary, what’s to become of her? A girl that can’t type. Take shorthand. With her leg and all; can’t even wait on table. What happens to a girl—a grown woman—that doesn’t know anything, never done anything? Except cook and look after her father. All I heard was: Mary, you’ve got to get married.”
“So. Why fight that? A fine person like you, you ought to be married. You’d make some fellow very happy.”
“Sure I would. But who?” She flung out her arms, extended a hand toward Manhattan, the country, the continents beyond. “So I’ve looked; I’m not lazy by nature. But honestly, frankly, how does anybody ever find a husband? If they’re not very, very pretty; a terrific dancer. If they’re just—oh ordinary. Like me.”
“No, no, not at all,” Mr. Belli mumbled. “Not ordinary, no. Couldn’t you make something of your talent? Your voice?”
She stopped, stood clasping and unclasping her purse. “Don’t poke fun. Please. My life is at stake.” And she insisted: “I am ordinary. So is old Annie Austin. And she says the place for me to find a husband—a decent, comfortable man—is in the obituary column.”
For a man who believed himself a human compass, Mr. Belli had the anxious experience of feeling he had lost his way; with relief he saw the gates of the cemetery a hundred yards ahead. “She does? She says that? Old Annie Austin?”
“Yes. And she’s a very practical woman. She feeds six people on $58.75 a week: food, clothes, everything. And the way she explained it, it certainly sounded logical. Because the obituaries are full of unmarried men. Widowers. You just go to the funeral and sort of introduce yourself: sympathize. Or the cemetery: come here on a nice day, or go to Woodlawn, there are always widowers walking around. Fellows thinking how much they miss home life and maybe wishing they were married again.”
When Mr. Belli understood that she was in earnest, he was appalled; but he was also entertained: and he laughed, jammed his hands in his pockets and threw back his head. She joined him, spilled a laughter that restored her color, that, in skylarking style, made her rock against him. “Even I—” she said, clutching at his arm, “even I can see the humor.” But it was not a lengthy vision; suddenly solemn, she said: “But that is how Annie met her husbands. Both of them: Mr. Cruikshank, and then Mr. Austin. So it must be a practical idea. Don’t you think?”
“Oh, I do think.”
She shrugged. “But it hasn’t worked out too well. Us, for instance. We seemed to have such a lot in common.”
“One day,” he said, quickening his steps. “With a livelier fellow.”
“I don’t know. I’ve met some grand people. But it always ends like this. Like us …” she said, and left unsaid something more, for a new pilgrim, just entering through the gates of the cemetery, had attached her interest: an alive little man spouting cheery whistlings and with plenty of snap to his walk. Mr. Belli noticed him, too, observed the black band sewn round the sleeve of the visitor’s bright green tweed coat, and commented: “Good luck, Miss O’Meaghan. Thanks for the peanuts.”
THE THANKSGIVING VISITOR
(1967)
for Lee
Talk about mean! Odd Henderson was the meanest human creature in my experience.
And I’m speaking of a twelve-year-old boy, not some grownup who has had the time to ripen a naturally evil disposition. At least, Odd was twelve in 1932, when we were both second-graders attending a small-town school in rural Alabama.