Afternoons I walk myself to the window of the Rose and Thistle. Young, unemployed people cavort there. They laugh and flirt. They drink. I look down at the layers covering my shrunken breasts. If someone comfortingly inquires if I’m lost, I point to the haberdasher on the corner. Just waiting for my coat to be fixed.
Dr. Derrick Foster stopped making love to me seven years ago in June. It’s an odd month. My wedding anniversary, Father’s Day, the blueberry festival. Dr. Derrick. The only man since my dead husband. He wasn’t so much a man as a mirth-making robot with a Jaguar. He kissed all my crow’s feet before bedtime; he preached indifference. I beat insomnia by holding his ass.
Can I tell you about the day my life changed? The Rose and Thistle was undergoing renovation, so I walked into a flower shop. A group of women stood in a circle by the asters. They carried on with breathless cries, hectoring salutations—like the group my dead husband played softball with long ago. These were gathered around a child. One of the women handled my shoulder in welcome. Want to see the precious, precious?
The baby looked browbeaten, Lithuanian—he wanted something more. I scoured the store for a substitute rattle.
A woman who wasn’t with the group, but who wore two sweaters and owned the shop, meandered over to me. Her aqua eyes were set apart, reptilian and relaxed. A crazy hairdo—straight from bed to work. She began talking to my shoes, Can you get them out of here? I have a titanic stomachache.
Karen was an older woman like me. I assumed she adored the Buddha because there were sixty figurines in her store. I’ll try, I answered. But I’m not a lucky person. I told the women I was an arsonist and paraded an orange lighter across my lips.
Karen became my friend and soon we went to restaurants and farmers’ markets, cackling about a man known for his squash, a man who had five total eyebrow hairs. Our daughters were both in college and we thought they should meet. They will get on so swell, she said. Maybe my Melissa will outgrow her bad habits. I couldn’t say my daughter kept her distance from me. The blonde who adored the beach and wanted a better life, not to listen to the things I was afraid of. My dazed son remained.
I started sleeping in Karen’s bed on Sundays. I’d dally there till noon, pretending I had purpose. It tickled her to leave the impoverished in the dust on Monday morning. I have to go now Maxine, she would say. I have to receive the fresh batches from this funny man who’s not in good shape. His nose is always running down his coat and he tells me about the locomotives he’s studied. Why do the lonely choose me?
Listening to her readying herself, I’d nuzzle her pillow and imagine a lemony scent where sheet dandruff and dead skin reigned. Her showers were long, but not hostile. The invitation was mostly open. But I liked that bed. I liked the coffee adding up in the kitchen. Karen in her beige robe could be broken and bleeding in the shower—I owned that bed.
When I chose Karen I chose frustration, yet I needed to make things right. My son had once tried to marry a stripper. I slapped him around and pretended to vomit. You don’t really love me, he growled. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I could feel the changes taking over. Staying in, not answering—hoarding my prison’s ceaseless time. He used to be more difficult, then I told him that he couldn’t have any more money until I died. I sold everything and entered Karen’s mess of a bungalow.
She and I continue to grow attached and worn. During the week I try to keep order in the house, but the flower business is not so kind. Karen boils sauces to explode and hides my library mysteries in her dresser. After she leaves in the morning, I laugh the wrong way round because she’s awful, she’s shattered. By men who were all ego. Karen pretends it isn’t bad, but dirt continually spreads from her mouth. She likes to go up to strange young men and say, I’ve had you a bunch of times. Now I can never kiss disappointment goodbye.
We see a healthy dose of films. In the darkness, I soothe my lady’s hands, nicked and cut by her flowers. Later, she tells me what I missed on the screen, what the trouble was, and how they solved it.
We go to the Rose and Thistle and sit on the patio, smiling at the street or sky. Karen has her microbrew and I have my tea and I’m the one who is cold. At first she was against matching anoraks. We aren’t a bowling team, you know.
My heart, these are coping mechanisms.
I sip and sink my bag to make the taste bitterer. Then comes her petty disgust, all hairy and oily, contaminated especially for me. You know, Maxine. If, down deep inside, I was a good woman, I would have told you how much I hate that you don’t work, that you don’t care about your children or your skin. She yucks it a bit for the people sitting nearby and then goes to the bathroom to crumble and wash her face.
I smile at the unsmiling people. They can’t know this is her way of asking me to never leave. After, in bed, I hold her tight and Karen hits. Rubs at my recent bruises and tells me I can’t possibly understand her. I say, My love is easy to manufacture. I tell her I prayed she would accept me into her life, and the wings holding our love would grow. She quietly waits until I stop touching her. Then she can sleep.