“Things aren’t going so well with my husband and me,” I said. “As I meant to indicate, I don’t think we’re going to be here much longer.”
She looked like a child who’d dropped its toy off a bridge. She frowned and her eyes made a long sweep along the floor, seeming to focus on the corner. She probably saw the dust balls. It was no more my problem to clean than my husband’s. If it was going to be a childless marriage and I wasn’t going to be a traditional wife, then he could clean as well as I could.
I got her the coffee and had a 7-Up myself, to be polite and drink along with her. Doing that with alcohol had led to the collapse of my first marriage. My second husband no one could have been married to. He went to Vietnam and came back loony. He thought trucks on the highway would blow up if we passed them. He was given three tickets for driving too slow on an interstate. He lied, telling them that he had rheumatism in his foot and that sometimes he just couldn’t push too hard on the accelerator. Actually, he thought everything was going to burst into flames.
“I’m very sorry to hear that you’re having problems,” Betty said. Her name was Betty. She’d told me that outside, before she came in. Betty what, she didn’t say.
I lowered my eyes.
“Don’t abandon hope!” she said so loudly she startled me. I wondered if she was a Christian. A lot of those, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, came around to the apartment my second husband and I occupied.
“What I mean is, our community needs you,” she said. “Our community needs younger people to restore life to it. There used to be children on bicycles, but no more. Maybe a grandchild or two, on the weekends.”
“On the highway?” I said. She was pointing to the road again. Actually, the road was a highway.
“We had rabbits and turtles and squirrels running everywhere. The telephone company came out and put squirrel-proof lines up, and the squirrels were doing acrobatics while the men were packing up their tool kits.” She had a wide smile that showed her fillings. She seemed to be warming up to something.
“This used to be a regular stop for a traveling carnival. To this day, I’ve got stuffed bears and alligators my husband won me at the carnival. He knocked those monkeys off the shelf with that hardball”—she held her thumb and first two fingers in the air, curled and spread as far as they could go, so that they looked like a meat hook—“and he was so good at it, the man said that he didn’t think he’d ever come back to town with the carnival again. Of course, that wasn’t the reason why the carnival disappeared.”
I nodded. I was coming to understand that she was suffering too.
“There used to be two trash pickups a week,” she said. “Now it’s just Monday morning, like we don’t eat and throw things out except after the weekends. I take it to the dump. You can hire a service to come get it, but they want everything wrapped just so. They act like they’re the local post office. Have you tried to mail a package from our local post office? If they sold the supplies, I’d think all that harassment was because they wanted to make a profit selling their own goods, but all they’ve got is manila envelopes.”
I had never been in the local post office. Our mail was delivered — what there was of it. Except for Christmas, we didn’t get much mail. At Christmas, various people remembered me.
“I suppose the greenhouse where my husband works had a heyday too?” I said. I was curious. It looked like it had been built at the turn of the century. It certainly didn’t look like it had ever been anything else.
“It offered a landscaping service the year I moved in,” Betty said. “There was always a dance on the longest day of the year, out on the big lawn leading up to the greenhouse. All the almond bushes and weeping cherry trees were in flower. It was an amazing sight.” She took a sip of coffee. “You know, there are handicapped people in town,” she said. “I’m supposed to say ‘physically challenged.’ They’re not on the streets now. I think that aging made it worse. It was some spine deformity, along with funny speech and a few marbles missing.” She tapped the side of her head. “They came to the dance, a few of them,” she said. “Everyone looked out for them.” She had another sip of coffee. “They were physically challenged because their mothers slept with their own brothers, and so forth,” she said.
I had a sip of 7-Up. I knew before she said so that the world could be a terrible place.
“Why don’t you move, then?” I said. “If it’s not the way it used to be, why don’t you and your husband move?”
She said “Ha!” and threw back her head. She had a mole under her chin I hadn’t seen before. “Because of my husband,” she said. “Now you’re going to think I’m trying to sell something, the way I was telling you I suspected the post office of doing. The thing is, my husband is a marriage counselor, and he works out of our home. It’s very centrally located, and he’s very much in demand. The patients don’t want to drive all over kingdom come to find him.” She took another sip of coffee. “My husband would never move,” she said. Then, as if struck by sudden inspiration, she picked up the bag she’d brought with her and put it on her lap. “If you and your husband did want his services, he’s the only marriage counselor in the book,” she said. “I’m not here to advocate his services, but since it came up in conversation, I thought I’d be forthcoming. When he and I have troubles, he irons them right out. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m your Welcome Wagon lady, and I have some things for you. We’ll just be optimistic and say that you’re staying in our fine community.”
She was a different person when she next started to talk. Her voice rose an octave higher, and her chin strained as if lifting to meet it. First she gave me a trowel. It was green metal, quite nice, with a wooden handle. Narrower than most trowels. It was from the greenhouse where my husband worked. A special trowel to plant bulbs.
She kept eye contact with me, reaching into the bag without looking down. She probably had the things in a particular order, because as she was speaking she produced each thing she began to talk about.
First I got the trowel, then a wide-tooth comb from the local hairstylist. Then Betty took out a golf ball and held it close to my face. “Tell me where that came from,” she said.
I moved my head back about a foot so I could focus. It was a white golf ball. I craned my neck to look around to the other side.
“It doesn’t say anything,” I said.
She yanked it back as fast as a child when another child shows interest in its toy. She examined it, held close to her chest.
“Imagine that!” she hooted. “All these years of giving away Willy Wyler Putt-Putt balls, and this one doesn’t bear the name!”
She put it on the table and continued. I reached out and played with it like a worry stone as she continued.
“A box of bonbons is yours from the local market,” she said, feeling in the bag. “It can be claimed when you purchase groceries in the amount of ten dollars.” She continued to feel around in the bag. “I mean, the bonbons aren’t here, but there’s a coupon — a coupon that’s rather thick, like cardboard.” She gave up feeling around and looked into the bag. “Oh no!” she said, pulling out a slip of pink paper. “Look at that!” she said. “I know just what happened. I told my husband about the parking ticket I got, and I said that it was in my bag, and he must have reached in and left the ticket there and removed the coupon for bonbons!” She shook her head from side to side. Tears had started to well up in her eyes. “Imagine taking the wrong piece of paper! That’ll show you how helpful men are when they mean to help you out!”
Wiping a tear away with her wrist, she continued to shake her head as she spoke. Then she gave me a map of the community, provided by the local hardware store. There was a smudge of blue eye shadow on her arm. It looked like a dangerously bulging vein.