When work is slow, I struggle with ways to spend my time. I’ve pulled the shoe box from under my bed to run my fingers through the collection of buttons. They fill the bottom of the box, two or three buttons deep.
Everyone I’ve ever embalmed is here, even a man I’d kissed, a onetime thing, and to be honest, our second encounter, when he came to my workroom, was nicer. I pick out one button at a time, feeling the details under my fingertips. The clear, nicked button from Mr. Mosley’s flannel shirt, a thread still attached; the rose-shaped button from Charlotte Taylor, whose pink blouse and padded bra covered thick tracks of mastectomy scars; the anchor-shaped button from small Daniel Keller’s blue-and-white sailor’s outfit. He had the smallest-sized casket we sell, and still, he hardly filled it, his body curled at one end of the box as in sleep, wrists touching.
Sometimes I take out two or three buttons and put them in my pocket for the day. I don’t know why. It’s dumb, but I do it.
I head downstairs into the mess our house has become. Pop and I have nothing to do and yet dishes pile in the sink because I’m no good when I’m not working, and this is my father’s state of being when I don’t step in.
I check his office and he is there, staring at the bills as if some solution will come to him that stretches our income.
“Numbers tough?” I ask.
He looks only at the papers and grimaces.
“Fridge is kind of empty,” I say. “Do we have enough in the account for groceries?”
“Maybe just get eggs and an onion,” he says.
“Potatoes?” I ask.
“Okay,” he says. “Nothing more, though.”
Outside the school bell rings, though it’s not time for school to let out. It is the wind grabbing the rope.
My feet scrape across the dirt road, kicking up dust. As I pass the Goldens’ house, I watch Doris, at the window, painting what might be a clown. The sound of women laughing makes me look up. One wears her curly hair tied back with a white headband. The other wears a pink hat with a pom-pom. This view I know well—the backs of neighbors, mostly at funerals—a world so near but out of reach. My father always nudges me—Go on, talk with them. But why? Someone can say, Hello, but mean, Oh, it’s you. Someone can say, Join us after the service, but mean, Please don’t.
These women live the kinds of lives my father wishes I had. Married with children and friends.
One of the women reaches into her purse, applies ChapStick, and then holds it out for the other, who takes it. This simple gesture is so touching, so painfully unfamiliar, that I ache. When I was in school, I longed to be invited into these circles, wondering what girls whispered to each other that sent them into giggles. I feel for the buttons in my pocket, roll them between my fingers.
The three of us hear something speeding down the road and turn to watch a truck as it swishes by, too close, slowing alongside the women. The one with curls leans toward the driver’s window.
The driver is not from Petroleum. You can tell by the license plate. The first numbers tell what county you’re from. There are more- and less-trusted counties, some so different from us, it’s like they’re from a different state.
The women look at each other, then there is a quick change of expression.
“Maybe you should just move on out of here,” the one with curly hair says, and they walk on, ignoring the driver, who now seems to be waiting for me.
“Excuse me,” he calls out the window.
I look to the women, who pause to see how this will go.
“Excuse me,” the man says again.
He holds out a business card.
“I own a wrecking crew,” he says. “Know who I can talk to about that gray tower by the highway?”
This happens every now and then. A stranger stops in the diner and asks if someone would like to hire him to knock down the central monument of our town. The women stop to watch my response.
“There’s no one for you to talk to,” I say.
“I could take down that old structure,” he says. “Make it a nice clean piece of land there.”
“Go on,” I say. “We don’t need your help.”
I’m just copying the words of the curly-haired woman, really. I wouldn’t have thought to say anything so bold if I hadn’t heard her first. The man gives me his card nonetheless. When he pulls away, I scrunch it up.
We hear the criticism all the time—how Petroleum needs to join the modern world or else die away, chained to the past. What this stranger considers an eyesore is a link to our history. No need to scold our people for trying to hold on a little while longer to something they’ve loved. The tower may collapse on its own, but no out-of-towner’s going to kick it down like something only good for scrap wood.
We watch the truck pull up to the deserted VFW, then the deserted pool hall, then the barbershop, still in operation, but closed today. Finally, the driver reaches the Pipeline, and the three of us smirk. He’ll get an earful in there.
“That’s telling him, Mary,” the woman with the pom-pom says. And I know her.
“You showed him,” the curly-haired woman says, but I watch the one in the pom-pom who sometimes held my hand as we played the game Eddie so many years ago and, later, scrambled out of the pool because I’d fouled the water.
The stones push against my rib cage. My hand wants to reach for the pain, but I would rather pretend the hurt has faded, like their names. The door opens at the diner, and the stranger storms out. When his truck flies past, the woman with curls grabs the scrunched business card from my hand and hurls it after him.
“Get out of here,” she shouts.
They break into laughter, and then, timidly, I do too. I feel a touch on my back, the hand of someone I believed would always reject me. I begin to laugh so uncontrollably, I inhale dust from the road.
“You can walk with us if you’re headed to the school,” says the one with curly hair.
“What’s happening at the school?” I ask, my voice froggy.
“Final band rehearsal,” says the one with the pom-pom.
I am in tears. I wish I could stop, but I am in tears, laughing and sobbing.
“Oh, this dust,” the women say together as I bend over, trying to cough it up.
This hand on my back. This moment of sorority. I can’t stop choking, no matter how many times I try to swallow or clear my throat. We are nearly to the entrance of the grocery. I’m tempted to continue on to the school with them.
“Mary.”
All three of us turn to see who has called my name.
“Mary,” Robert calls again and holds his hand up in hello. He has just come out of Vinter’s.
I’m coughing, shaking my head to show I can’t talk.
I feel the hand release. The price I pay for this hello fills me with grief and resentment.
“We’re going to be late,” says the one with the pom-pom. “Are you sure you’re all right? Because we have to go.”
And I know I cannot continue on to the school, where I’d sit awkwardly in the gymnasium bleachers with mothers watching their children, wondering why I was there. They’d only invited me to be polite, certain I’d say no. I wave and nod my head, my throat still spasming. Yes, go. Go.
Robert reaches into his grocery bag as the women continue on toward the school.
“Here,” he says.
He opens a can of orange Shasta and hands it to me. I drink a long sip, cough again, drink another.
“Every time I cough or blow my nose,” he says, trying to joke, “I find some of this town has snuck its way inside.”
From the moment he offered me a drink, I’ve felt a relaxing in my rib cage. I want to fit in with the others, but with Robert, I can just be.
“You know, we should grab coffee sometime,” he says.
I almost let myself laugh again. It sounds like the kind of thing people say in big cities.
“How ’bout Thursday morning?” he asks.
“You’re serious?”
“Sure I am,” he says. “I hear there’s a great diner in town.”
I rub my pointer finger under each eye to wipe away any smudged mascara.
“Would ten work?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Okay. Yes,” I say.
A tiny smile, but genuine.
“I almost forgot,” he says, looking toward his bag of groceries, “I’ve got ice cream for my ma in here. I better get it in the freezer.”
Once he’s on his way, I open the door to Vinter’s. Advertisements flutter against the bulletin board just inside, and I notice announcements for the Blizzard Festival and winter concert. I have agreed to have coffee with Robert on the same day as our town’s biggest festival. All of Petroleum will have the day off to witness our date.