EDITH DIDN’T REALLY know which hat. There were a whole bunch of them on the little stand and she took down a blue felt with a red rose on the brim. She turned it over to see where the label was so she could tell back from front, although maybe there was no such thing anymore as back and front. She placed the hat carefully on top of her head, the label in the back (the rose off center), and then she gently pulled it down her forehead. The hat felt snug around her head, tight and oddly reassuring. It made Edith think about her skull, and the delicate brain inside, and how nicely everything worked. She looked at her reflection in the mirror that sat at a tilt on the counter, and automatically she made her mirror face, lips pursed, eyes slightly narrowed. It was a forties face, a femme fatale face, and Edith had been making it since she was twelve years old.
“May I?” asked the pretty Chinese salesgirl behind the counter, and without waiting for Edith to answer she reached across and with cool sure hands she tugged the hat down over Edith’s left ear, leaving the other naked and, Edith felt, unecessarily exposed. “Looks good at an angle,” said the young woman, and she smiled at Edith and motioned to the mirror. Edith blushed. “Oh,” she said, “thank you.” She looked in the mirror again just to be polite and then she quickly pulled the hat off and patted her hair. “Not really for me,” she said apologetically, and replaced the hat on its little sponge rubber pad. “Thank you, though.”
The girl continued to smile and Edith pulled down a different hat, an enormous greenish beret-looking affair, and Edith put it back without trying it on. It looked awfully saggy and Edith thought it would droop down the back of her coat like some hideous net. Edith was wearing her good gray coat, the warm one she had gotten last year on sale. It wasn’t a frumpy coat—Edith wasn’t a frump, it was a middle-aged coat for a middle-aged person. You could not distinguish two separate breasts beneath it, just a broad dignified expanse that sloped more or less outward and dropped off more or less downward over the substantial person that Edith had, over the years, become. Her only ornament was a silver sea turtle, which clambered ever up toward Edith’s shoulder.
Edith reached now for a dark blue hat but the salesgirl handed her instead a floppy black bonnet with red and yellow cherries in a big bunch at the front, if that was the front, the whole thing a bit shapeless and haphazard looking. Edith remembered sucking on some ornamental cherries once when she was small, not giving up at the pasty, disappointing taste. She remembered her mother taking them out of her mouth, fussing and scolding as she did so. This was perhaps Edith’s earliest memory.
Edith stood still now as the girl positioned the hat on her head. There was a wire at the outermost part of the brim which reminded Edith of a run-over lampshade, but she didn’t say so. The girl’s fingers brushing Edith’s cheek made Edith feel suddenly sleepy and she said, “Is this a warm hat?” instead of “Do I look silly?,” not wanting to look in the mirror but doing so anyway. Actually, the hat looked rather nice on her and the cherries gave her coat a little lift. But it was completely out of the question and she took it off carefully and handed it back to the girl. “I don’t know,” said Edith.
“Looked very nice,” said the girl. “One of a kind.” She smiled at Edith, revealing extremely white teeth.
Edith reached again for the small blue hat. It was really more of a knitted cap, the kind sailors wore. “I knew somebody had a hat like this once,” said Edith, looking in the mirror as she raised her eyebrows and lowered the cap over her head. The girl leaned forward and began to tuck stray strands of Edith’s hair under the cap but Edith drew back as politely as she could. “You probably weren’t even born then,” said Edith, and she smiled her own nicest smile. The girl nodded and Edith thought how pretty she was, beautiful almost. “He saw me in my nightgown once,” Edith continued, lowering her voice. “Of course, that’s nothing in today’s world, but in 1953, I can tell you, it was considered very risqué.” The girl disappeared down behind the counter and Edith heard the rustling of tissue paper and then the girl stood up again. “I walked in my sleep, you see,” said Edith. “I was standing on our front lawn in my white nightgown and a pair of red rubber boots, if you can believe such a thing. It was raining.” Edith looked at the girl to see if she could believe such a thing but couldn’t read her expression. “He took my upper arm, you see, very gently, so as not to wake me”—Edith illustrated by grabbing the upper part of her right arm with her left hand—“only I must have been awake already because I can recall everything.”
“Really.” The girl neatened up a pile of pink tissue paper.
“Yes, indeed. He led me back inside the house and I could smell his breath because he had been drinking. He had a cigarette in his mouth the entire time, I remember distinctly, although it had gone out in the rain. He put his cap on my head which was silly because it was as wet as my hair and he sat me down on a kitchen chair. Then he said, ‘See you later, Edith,’ and he left.” Edith noticed the girl had sunk to her knees again behind the counter and all she could see was the top of her head. Edith was forced to raise her voice. “You know, he went to prison several months later for burglary. My mother knew his parents. We didn’t see them for the longest time.” Edith fell silent. “I wasn’t a popular girl. But I always had a very small waist.”
The girl had several boxes on top of the counter and she was laying tissue paper in them now. “Would you like to see something else?” Her smile was friendly.
“Of course, I believed myself to be in love with him for a week after, maybe a month.” Edith looked at herself again in the mirror. “Do you think this hat makes my head look too small?”
“Excuse me?” the girl answered.
“Does it look as if I’ve got a little head?”
“No,” said the girl. “No, not at all. It looks fine. Very nice.”
“Because that’s the one thing you can’t change,” said Edith. “A little head. There’s nothing you can do about it. I have a horror of appearing to have a little head,” said Edith, and she took a small mirror out of her bag. Edith looked at herself from the side, from all angles. “I was too shy to speak to him again. My mother made me return the hat. I’m afraid I may have snubbed him.” Edith satisfied herself that her head appeared to be a normal size. “I think I’ll take the other one. Please. After all. The one with the cherries.”
Edith wore her new hat out of the store. On the street, she caught sight of herself in a shop window and she took it off and carried it in her hand. A block later she put it back on; then, crossing Broadway against the light, she took it off again. And so it continued, all the way home.
“NEGLIGEE,” SAID EDITH, forcing the word with some difficulty from her mouth.
“For madam?”
“For someone about my size,” said Edith humbly. “My friend is too sick to shop.”
Murmurs of sympathy.
“Well, not sick, exactly. She broke her leg,” said Edith. “Well, actually, just one of the small bones in her foot,” Edith went on, warming to it. “A can of soup fell on it. Unopened. A big can. The red looks nice. No, the black looks nice. She’ll like the little roses, I think. Her husband is coming back from a long trip,” Edith found it necessary to add. “Is there a bottom part too?”
Edith paid for the tiny thing, assured by the saleslady that this would be flattering to the full-figured woman.
Edith took the plane to Richmond. “I am taking a flier on love,” whispered Edith on the plane, sitting by the window, ripping open the bags of peanuts. She watched the houses shrink, the ribbons of road start to stretch out and uncurl beneath her. She wondered what would happen to the plane if she stopped concentrating. “If he’s there, he’s there,” thought Edith philosophically.
He was there but he didn’t recognize Edith’s voice. “Who is this?” he said.
“Don’t you remember?” said Edith. She had packed nothing but the tiny nightie. She had left her return ticket open. It smelled good in Richmond. She loved the smell of rotting vegetation. “Don’t you remember?” said Edith. “We had three margaritas? After your talk? You said to call if I was ever in Richmond and now here I am.” Edith remembered everything. She had stood pink and perspiring in his hotel room wearing her big snowsuit and her scarf and he had worn his gray parka with the stain on the pocket and he had kissed her seven times. She remembered everything although she had been a bit tipsy.
“Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” she had chortled all the way home in the taxi. His name was Tyler, and he was a travel writer, and she had sat next to him in Mrs. Keosian’s ninth-grade science class. Her mother had known his mother. Edith had read everything he had ever written. Edith had gone to a lecture he gave which was so ill-attended that she had had no trouble speaking to him after it was over. They had been the only two people in the auditorium. She had offered herself as a companion for coffee, and he had hesitated and then accepted. He had taken her elbow, and guided her across the streets. They had not gone out for coffee, he had taken her to Brat’s and ordered margaritas for her, a double scotch on the rocks for himself. “So,” he had said when they were sitting at a dark scarred little table in the back, “where have you run across my work?” Later, in his hotel room, Edith had never even taken off her coat. After several minutes of kissing he had pushed her away and regarded her at arm’s length. “Ah, Edith,” he had said, perspiring a bit himself. “Well. It’s getting quite late and I have to catch a very early plane. Let me find you a cab. No, I insist.” Edith’s mouth was still hot from kissing. She stood before him, a trembly maiden of fifty-two. “You can call me, Edith, if you ever come to Richmond,” Tyler had said kindly as he shook her hand. He had given the driver a twenty and told him to keep the change. It was so generous of him, Edith had thought, tipsy and happy and bewildered by love.
“YOU’RE WHERE?” TYLER sounded alarmed. “Where are you staying, Edith?”
“With you,” said Edith, feeling warm. Her stockings were too hot for this weather. She put her little bag on the floor between her feet and unbuttoned her big coat. It was very, very warm here. “I’ve come down for the weekend.” Edith tried to sound casual.
“My god,” he said, and there was a long pause. Edith waited, her left foot rubbing her right ankle where something must have bitten her already. “All right, Edith,” he said finally, but his voice sounded so grim.
Tyler picked her up in the reddest car Edith ever had seen. “My,” she said, settling herself in the front seat with a happy fuss. “This is the just the reddest car. It’s so interesting here.” Edith looked out of the window, which she had rolled all the way down. Tyler asked her to roll it back up again. He had air-conditioning in his car. Everyone had air-conditioning everywhere down South.
“I’M AFRAID, EDITH,” said Tyler when they had gotten under way, “I’m afraid”—he shook his head sorrowfully— “you’ve come at a bad time for me. If you’d care to stay in my guest room I would be happy to have you. Otherwise—” He broke off. He cleared his throat. Edith studied a small red bump on the back of her left hand. She brought it close to her face for a better look. She wondered what chiggers looked like, actually. “My psychiatrist has warned me against starting, you know, a new relationship right now. We’ve reached a turning point in my analysis, and she feels it would be destructive for me to engage in anything intimate with a new woman at the moment, no matter how”—he smiled at Edith—“appealing she might be. I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about.” And Tyler studied the road ahead, where a car was pulling into his lane.
Edith, blushing furiously, understood. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t mind. I’m just down for the day anyway. I always do this. I like to have a look at other parts of the United States whenever I get a chance. And mother was having company today so I thought to myself, what a good time to visit Richmond. So historical.” Edith’s voice grew husky. She too cleared her throat. She began scratching the back of her hand. She hoped he would have calamine lotion in his house, but she wasn’t going to ask him.
Tyler’s walls were lined with books and his sliding kitchen doors were made of glass. He had a small garden and a hanging jasmine plant. Edith stood beneath it while he was out. She breathed in the sweet sweet smell. “We could be so happy here,” she whispered. Tyler had many appointments, and Edith had not given him any warning. He was sorry, but this was a normal day of work for him and he hoped she would be all right alone. “You won’t be too bored, I hope,” he said. “Oh, no,” said Edith. “There is so much to read here.” And she smiled at him as he left, wanting to wave from the front door. She stood there with her hand up but he didn’t turn around. He just got into his car and drove away. “After all,” said Edith to herself, “I’m not his wife.” Edith sat down at the kitchen table with a book by Tyler Fletcher in her lap. She studied photographs of him trekking up mountainsides, picking his way across bogs. She studied the muscles in his calves. The phone rang and rang but Tyler had said the machine would pick up any calls. She should not bother herself. Tyler had showed her how to turn down the sound if it got too troublesome. The blinking red light was for messages. Soon it was blinking so fast Edith couldn’t count the calls. The phone rang fifty times. The sound was turned off on the answering machine, so Edith couldn’t hear any of the messages. Edith didn’t dare go upstairs. Suppose he came home unexpectedly and found her there, snooping?
Edith made herself a cup of coffee. He had a drip coffeepot but his coffee had that horrible almond flavor and Edith had to pour it down the sink. At three-thirty, Edith ventured outside for a brief walk. But really, his was just a street like other streets, and she was afraid people would wonder who she was and what she was doing there. Along the way she sustained several other small bites. She came back after only five minutes and she looked in his medicine chest. No calamine. Only aftershave. Six different kinds of aftershave. She picked her favorite, which was what she thought he had smelled like the night he had kissed her so many times. Edith put the bottle in her pocket. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Absolutely not.” And she put it back on the shelf. His medicine chest was clean and orderly. She looked inside his laundry hamper. The clothes in there were folded too. Men’s blue boxer shorts. She wanted to pick up a pair but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She thought again of his kisses and the memory caused little shocks on the palms of her hands, the soles of her feet. “How odd,” she thought. “It really is electricity.”
When Tyler got home, he put a bag of groceries on the counter. The phone rang and he spoke into it with a low voice. “Tomorrow,” she heard him say. “Yes. I promise.” Edith felt so silly. She wanted to disappear. But she was much too big to disappear. She decided to make the best of it. She cooked an omelet. Edith was good with eggs and butter, and her omelets were always tender and brown. “This is a symphony,” said Tyler, taking a bite, “a poem and a symphony.”
“This is my specialty,” said Edith, proud and happy. “One of my specialties.” And she ate her omelet with a big spoon.
They watched trout fishing on late-night TV. Large-mouth-bass fishing, taught by the Bass Master. It was for some reason terribly funny. They both laughed hysterically. Edith found herself wanting to sit closer and closer, but Tyler had put a pillow between them to rest his arm. Tears came to their eyes. Edith’s stomach began to hurt and she had to cry out. “No,” she said. “Stop. Don’t. It’s too funny!” she shouted, doubling over like a big piece of bread.
“I never laugh this hard,” said Tyler with a puzzled expression on his face and Edith thought he might be going to kiss her. “Good night,” he said instead. On Edith’s bedside table was a book called A Man Called Peter. Also a copy of Spartacus. Edith took this as a joke and she read the first lines of both books. Then she put them back carefully. The bed was small, a cot really. She turned on the air conditioner, then turned it off again. She opened her overnight bag and took out the negligee. It took her some time to figure out how it went, because it had no regular arms or legs, and then when she got it on she wanted to see how it looked, but there was no mirror in the bedroom except a tiny one above the bureau in which Edith could see no more than her face. Edith tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom and climbed up on the edge of the tub to look in the mirror. She turned this way and that. “Well,” she said, “it’s not too bad, really.” On her way back to bed she looked up the long stairs to Tyler’s room. He had already turned out his lights. It was completely dark up there. What would happen if she just went up and lay down in the bed next to him? It wouldn’t be good manners, certainly. And she might be sent back downstairs again and that would be the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to Edith, worse than anything. So Edith climbed into the little bed and she slept the night in her negligee, which itched her, and by morning, what with scratching and adjusting and flailing about in a strange bed, the thing had torn and Edith found it in the bed underneath her. It had come right off in the night. Perhaps it had not been well made, perhaps they were not meant for actual sleeping. Edith packed it anyway; she was afraid Tyler would find it if she threw it away. Besides, it was a souvenir of sorts.
In the morning Tyler was in a hurry. He needed to get to a big meeting that day and he was anxious to drive Edith to the airport. On top of that, his phone was ringing again. “It was awfully good of you to come,” said Tyler to Edith, holding open the front door. The telephone rang again. Tyler spoke less softly this time. “Yes,” he said, “I realize that,” and he put the phone down hard. Edith was sure they would never have spoken to each other like that. Tyler was warming up the engine and Edith took a last look around. “Good-bye house,” she said, holding a breath of jasmine all the way to the car.
Before they drove away, Edith ran back inside. She thought she might have forgotten something on the night table. On the way out, she dropped a teacup into Tyler’s disposal, pushing it well down. It would be difficult to retrieve. This gave her some satisfaction, and she smiled. She just wanted to break something of his, she didn’t know why.
EDITH’S MOTHER WAS in and out of the hospital all spring. Fluids dripped into her arm, the oxygen tank made a gurgling that sounded like surf. “Where are we?” Edith’s mother asked often. “We’re in New York City,” said Edith. “You’re in the hospital.”
“What’s that noise?” Edith’s mother sounded suspicious.
“What noise?” Edith strained to hear.
“That noise. That ocean noise.”
“I think that’s the oxygen, Mother,” said Edith.
“What’s out there then?” asked Edith’s mother, pointing to the window.
Edith got up from her chair and looked through a slat of the venetian blind. “More hospital,” she answered truthfully, “and some river.”
“Thank god,” said Edith’s mother. “I thought we were in Hawaii.”
Home again, the nurses who cared for Edith’s mother wore rubber gloves for certain procedures. There was no word to describe the sound these gloves made going on or coming off. It was a sound unlike any other. Brisk, you could say, thought Edith. Brisk. These were good women and efficient and there was nothing for Edith to do. Still, her mother liked Edith’s presence in the room, and always knew when Edith got up to leave. “Where are you going, Edith,” she said sharply, even when her eyes were closed. It was Edith’s knees creaking. Or the air she displaced, creating a draft.
“Nowhere, mother,” said Edith.
“I could use a glass of something cold,” said her mother. “Tea might be nice.” But she was asleep when Edith brought it back. “You forgot the ice,” said her mother later when she woke. But she was joking.
Edith’s mother beckoned Edith to come close. Edith drew her chair up next to the bed and leaned over. “Watch those girls,” said her mother in a loud whisper. “See that they don’t steal anything else.” Edith’s mother had been imagining things missing. A pillow. An extension cord. An old watchband gone from the windowsill. “Mother,” said Edith. “Everything is where it is supposed to be.”
“I know what I know,” said her mother and set her lips in a maddening smile. Edith’s mother’s hair was going white.
“Don’t go through my things,” said Edith’s mother. “I’m not dead yet, you know.” Edith had quietly opened the top drawer of her mother’s bureau.
“I am getting you a handkerchief,” said Edith, but she was slipping a pair of gloves into the pocket of her dress.
“They won’t fit you, Edith,” said her mother. “I have small hands.”
Edith’s pocket were crammed. Lipsticks, a pair of manicure scissors, coins from the top of her mother’s dresser. This was not stealing. It would bring her mother luck, she thought. She was going to give everything back. When she examined it all later in her own room, her heart pounding like a thief, Edith saw the gloves were her favorite kind, kid gloves that smelled so sweet. She held them up to her face and breathed in the sweet smell. She opened a different drawer the next day. “Edith,” said her mother. “Come away from there.” Edith did as she was told, although she was almost fifty-three years old. She sat down in the chair by her mother’s bed. Edith fingered the pearls in her pocket. Her mother had always worn these pearls. She had taught Edith to test a pearl between her teeth. She had told Edith they would be hers someday. Someday was not so interesting. Edith didn’t want them someday. Everything seemed so much more valuable while her mother was alive. She didn’t want pearls. She wanted her mother’s pearls while her mother was still alive. Later, she put them back. The jewelry box had a squeaky lid but her mother did not seem to mind this time.
“Don’t come too close,” whispered her mother, pushing Edith away. “I don’t want you catching anything.” Edith’s mother’s breathing reminded Edith of footsteps, slow and deliberate with long pauses between, because of the dark, because of the unfamiliarity of the terrain.
Edith’s mother died in her sleep. Edith was asleep too. The nurse shook Edith’s shoulder and Edith woke instantly. The nurse left Edith alone with her mother’s body. Edith looked from her mother’s face to the ceiling. She waved at the ceiling because she had read that the dying person looks down at the bed. “Good-bye, Mother,” Edith said to the ceiling. She held her mother’s hand. She kissed her mother’s forehead. Edith didn’t want to leave the room. She wasn’t sure where to go. Surely everything had changed.
She put on her big flowered nightgown and lay down on the couch. She couldn’t go to sleep and she couldn’t stay awake. She wasn’t sure what to do with herself so she got up and ran water for a bath. She poured in soap flakes and swirled up the suds. She took off her nightgown and climbed in, gingerly lowering her large white body into the tub. What a lot of Edith there seemed to be. She lay back. She lifted one leg out of the water, then the other. Here I am, thought Edith. She made gloves out of the soapsuds, short churchy ones that covered only her hands, then long creamy white evening gloves that extended to her elbows and above, reaching almost to her armpits.
EDITH DID NOT cry. Her mother had had a rich and interesting life and at the end she had wished for death. During the final week Edith’s mother had called out “I love you, I love you,” to an unseen presence in the room. Perhaps Edith’s father, come back as a ghost to help his wife into the next world. Edith tried to keep her face calm at these moments, lest her father’s ghost think less of her. He had been a handsome man, Edith an awkward child.
Her mother had never cried either, if the abundance of unused handkerchiefs in her bottom drawer meant anything. Her mother had never cried, nor had she been sick a day in her life until what took her away at the end. Edith sat on the floor next to the dresser, looking at these handkerchiefs, many in their original cellophane envelopes. “I bought this for her,” said Edith. The hankie in question was linen, in the corner a large purple petunia. Something about the color made Edith homesick, but she knew not for what since she was home, had always been home. She slid the handkerchief out of its wrapper and into her pocket. She was going out this morning, despite the risk of running into Mr. Feeley, and she wanted something to blot her eyes with if the pollen was flying. Her eyes had been bothering her lately, quite red in the mornings. Edith’s knees creaked as she got to her feet, although she was still every bit as strong as she ever had been.
Edith was almost ashamed of her own loss next to that of Mr. Feeley. What a shabby grief was hers when you considered the poor old widower. Just as Edith would be thinking about her mother she would remember Mrs. Feeley, and the love the two Feeleys had had for each other, and how they had been inseparable, husband and wife, married for sixty years, and she felt ashamed at her own sorry state. Mr. Feeley’s suffering was so absolute as to strike poor Edith dumb. What could she possibly say in the face of such a loss? She sometimes stayed indoors for days on end just to avoid meeting Mr. Feeley, king of grief. She had lain under the bedclothes unwilling to show her face after she had heard the news. (Once Mrs. Feeley had sent a Jell-O salad to her mother. “Get that out of my house,” Edith’s mother had said, and Edith had swept the Jell-O into a bowl and returned the dish. Later she’d eaten the salad herself. “What became of that dreadful midwestern mess,” Edith’s mother had asked. “You didn’t eat it, did you? Oh, Edith.”)
But today she found no food in the kitchen and realized she had been indoors for four days without removing her nightgown. “Snap out of it,” said Edith, “or you’ll end up in the window dusting a fern.” She cleaned up the many cups and saucers half full of milky tea and the copper bowl full of orange peels. She stacked the unread newspapers neatly on the extra kitchen chair. She bathed and dressed and left the apartment, checking in her bag for the keys three times before actually closing the door behind her.
EDITH WAS WALKING up toward Broadway, passing the Single Woman’s Bookstore, when Mr. Feeley hove into view. She had nowhere to hide, not really, unless she ducked into the shop, and she could see through the window that Georgia, the proprietress, had one breast exposed for her baby boy and Edith just didn’t feel up to that. So she took a deep breath and approached Mr. Feeley, holding out her hand.
“I am so very sorry,” she said, offering her hand and trying to breathe through her mouth. His nails were unkempt, his hair wild, he smelled (could it be true?) of actual urine. Good Lord, thought Edith, real grief is so untidy.
“My wife died,” said Mr. Feeley. “My Lois.”
“Oh yes, I know, and I am so sorry.”
“She died. She left me here by myself. She’s gone, you know.” His shoulders had begun to shake, and his left hand went toward his face, she saw his sleeve silvery with dried mucus. “I hung on for her, and see what happened. I’m alone now.”
“Oh dear, Mr. Feeley,” said Edith. There were crumbs on his chin. Saltines? He was wearing bedroom slippers.
“You know, I start to say something to her and then I see her chair is empty.”
“I’m sure it must be very hard, Mr. Feeley.” She patted his shoulder.
“Call me Martin. The worst is that I see her all the time now. That’s how you know they’re dead,” he whispered, “when you start to see them in subways.”
Edith, who just four days ago had been stabbed through the heart by a woman in a wheelchair who from the back looked like her mother, and had had to stifle the cry “Mother!” knew what Mr. Feeley meant. When she had caught up she had seen the woman was a much younger person, and had a cheerful face.
“How is your mother?” asked Mr Feeley suddenly.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Edith began but he interrupted her.
“Keeping fit, is she? You tell her I’ll be dropping by,” he said. “Your mother was one of the finest actresses of her generation.” He was shaking his finger near Edith’s face. “Mrs. Feeley loved her. We never missed a Harriet Tall-madge film. Never. You tell your mother that from me, will you? My Lois loved her work.”
“She will be so gratified,” said Edith, “to hear it.”
“I’m ready to go myself, you know.”
“Oh, Mr. Feeley,” Edith began, not knowing what to say.
“It’s true. Why not speak the truth. Mrs. Feeley was not afraid. She said she wasn’t afraid. ‘I’ve always liked to travel,’ she said. I miss her,” he said, bits of saltine-like crumbs flying into the air. Edith pictured God, a messy eater with crumbs in his beard, before he created the solar systems, napkins. He spoke out of loneliness, after a meal, and the flying crumbs and spittle became stars and planets. “A couple of pears would be nice,” said Mr. Feeley. “Not too ripe, not too many dents and bruises. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Edith. “And I’ll just ring your bell when I come back, shall I?”
“I may be resting,” said Mr. Feeley. “Just hang it from the doorknob.”
A few blocks down Broadway Edith took out her handkerchief. “I know just how old I was,” she said, “six. And I thought this the prettiest thing I ever saw. And my mother saved it all these years. Imagine.” She stood in front of the New Delhi Restaurant, which had closed soon after opening. Its tattered plastic flags blew cheerfully in the breeze, unaware that the festivities were over. Edith peered in the window. On a table stood a stack of white plates at the ready. They looked so eager, but had been abandoned. Inanimate objects were having too strong an effect on Edith. “I am a stack of white plates,” said Edith to herself. On the way home she bought three pears but ate two of them herself on the street, one after the other, wiping her chin with the handkerchief.
THE CRAZY LADY began to shout just as Edith’s coffee arrived. “Oh dear,” thought Edith, “Esmerelda.” This was not, of course, the woman’s name, but you couldn’t just call someone the crazy lady, not forever, not even in your own mind, and Edith had settled on Esmerelda. Not that the woman looked like an Esmerelda; she was Chinese, or Tibetan, perhaps even an Eskimo, but she felt like an Esmerelda, at least to Edith, for whom the name conjured up somebody doomed by (among other things) love. Edith dropped the thin curl of lemon peel into her espresso and then turned sideways in her chair to look down the street. Poor Esmerelda, there she certainly was, gesturing at nobody Edith could see, and shouting what were presumably oaths in a language Edith did not recognize. Probably gibberish, no real language at all. She was a small woman, sturdily built, and she was wearing what she always wore, two huge spots of rouge and a short fur coat. Her hair looked as if it had been recently chopped at, or sawn off, Edith thought, with a dull knife. Edith had seen her around the neighborhood for months, and given her a wide berth.
Edith called to the waiter. “I think there is something floating in here,” she said apologetically, holding up a pitcher of milk. This was her favorite waiter, the one she called Pablo because of his enormous burning dark eyes. Pablo frowned, and took the pitcher away. He returned moments later with sugar and a small vessel of cream. Edith didn’t want cream. She never took cream, she wanted milk, and she already had sugar, but she decided to leave well enough alone. She would just drink her coffee black this morning, she wasn’t really all that fussy, black with sugar. “Thank you,” said Edith, but Pablo was looking over his shoulder at Esmerelda, who had stopped to search in a trash basket. “Crazy lady,” said Pablo, tapping his head. “No-good lady.” Edith didn’t think you should blame someone for being crazy and she was sorry for Pablo that he had said such a mean thing. Especially not crazy in love, which was part of Esmerelda’s problem, or at least the form it sometimes took. Edith shifted in her chair again and realized that the table where she was sitting was going to be uncomfortably close if Esmerelda stood outside Hector’s Flower Store today. Edith glanced around for another place to sit, a table further away, but they were all occupied. The café had filled up. It was a lovely morning.
Why Esmerelda had fallen in love with Hector nobody seemed to know. Of course, nobody knew why anybody loved anybody. Or why anybody didn’t, either, for that matter. Edith herself thought it must have to do with flowers. Maybe Esmerelda had loved a gardener in another land. Or maybe Hector had once given her an old corsage, something he had been going to throw away. Maybe he had pinned it on her coat to fulfill a bargain with God. You never knew. Hector had certainly been nice enough to send flowers to Edith when her mother died, even remembering that the old lady had loved freesias. You could fall in love with Hector and remain perfectly sane, Edith decided. She shut her eyes and tried unsuccessfully to imagine falling in love with Hector. When she opened them, she let out a little cry. Esmerelda was passing so close to Edith’s table that Edith might have reached out and touched her sleeve. Her hideous ragged sleeve.
Esmerelda’s coat was more dreadful close up than Edith could have imagined. There was a ghastly slickness to the fur, and the lining was torn and hanging down in front, and Edith wasn’t a bit sure what kind of animal this fur had originally come from. It reminded her of some terrible red monkey, big as a child, balding in places. But Esmerelda was clearly an Eskimo, Edith decided, getting a good look at the woman’s cheekbones. In which case it was no wonder she had gone crazy. You would have to be crazy not to go crazy if you were an Eskimo woman in New York City. Edith’s heart was beating rapidly, but maybe she had only imagined the smell.
Edith patted her hair, straightened the collar of her nice navy-blue jacket. She opened a napkin and put it in her lap. Esmerelda was now standing among the lilacs outside Hector’s, and she was plucking at something on the front of her coat. She wasn’t shouting or singing right now, and unless you saw her close up you might not know she was crazy. The only crazy person Edith had ever known had been her Aunt Neddie, and she had never wandered around shouting, or singing. “Neddie is not herself,” Edith’s mother sometimes said. Edith knew that Neddie had seen visions and heard voices, and they had not been friendly. Poor Neddie. She had perished so long ago, and in a far-off land, and Edith had not even been thirteen. Now that Edith’s mother was dead there was nobody left to remember Neddie except Edith, and all Edith had were fragments, shards really, painful bits and pieces of a woman whose lipstick was too dark, whose kisses had always hurt Edith’s cheeks, whose breasts had always been embarrassingly visible in her loose bathing suits, and whose favorite poem had begun, “O Western wind, when wilt thou blow,” a poem that had meant nothing to Edith when Neddie had shown it to her years and years ago, weeping, when Edith had been eight.
Edith opened three sugars and put them in her coffee, but it was too much, and did not make up for the lack of milk. She knew most people did not like milk in espresso, but Edith did. She decided to call to Pablo. Pablo was looking into the street, where Hector was crouched behind a blue van, waiting for Esmerelda to leave. Kind-hearted, Hector never called the police. Instead, he hid. Edith watched as Hector peeked around the back of the vehicle and Edith waved a tiny wave at him, but he didn’t wave back. No doubt he hadn’t seen her. Hector had a big soft wife somewhere, Edith was sure of this, a nice wife who cooked lamb for him, and orzo, and dropped cinnamon in all his food to give it mystery. Edith tried but failed to imagine him in a house with furniture, she could only picture him on the sidewalk surrounded by flowers, flowers of all kinds in all kinds of containers, big mayonnaise jars of flowers.
Esmerelda began shouting and stamping, and waving her arms. All around Edith people were talking and she could catch nobody’s eye. It wasn’t easy to ignore Esmerelda all by yourself, and Edith rummaged in her bag for her compact. She snapped it open and looked at herself in the mirror. There you are, she said under her breath, there you are. Edith applied a few dabs of powder to her nose and chin. It was so difficult to appear normal at times like these. And nearly impossible not to stare, but who knew? You might go crazy yourself. You might break into song, or pull off your garments. You might run naked down Broadway baying at the moon, or start directing traffic. Yesterday she had caught herself talking out loud to no one at the bus stop. “Lovely, lovely day,” were the words Edith had heard herself saying. Innocent enough, but once you began, where might it end? Well, thought Edith, putting her powder back in her bag and glancing at Esmerelda. She would certainly never be crazy enough to wear that coat. Of course, maybe it was all the poor thing had. Maybe underneath that coat Esmerelda was wearing nothing at all. Edith shivered. She touched the top button of her nice silk blouse for reassurance. She smoothed her skirt. What would Edith do under those circumstances? Would Edith be able to stick her nice plump clean arms down those filthy sleeves to cover her nakedness? If she were thrown out on the streets could she wear filthy skins? Edith herself had never been dirty. During one regrettable period Edith had spent several days in her nightgown. It was after her mother died. She had felt odd for a day or two. Maybe a week or two. Edith didn’t want to think about the odd feeling. It might come back.
Because who knew where crazy came from? It might just drop out of the sky.
“May I take this chair?” A young woman spoke to Edith. “Or are you waiting for someone?” She hovered politely at the edge of Edith’s table. Startled, Edith jumped. She had been trying to remember whether it was locusts that John the Baptist had eaten.
“Oh no,” said Edith, “I’m not waiting for anybody. Well, not anybody in particular,” she said. “I mean, I think we’re all waiting for somebody or other,” Edith went on. “We just don’t know who it is.” Edith shrugged helplessly. “You can take the chair,” she added, as the girl remained poised with her hands on the back of it.
“Thanks,” was all the girl said in reply, and she dragged the chair to a table nearby at which two and now three students were sitting. “He hates my guts,” Edith heard one of them say. “He loves my guts,” said another. Edith wondered of whom they were speaking. Could it be her Pablo? Edith glanced at him. He stood against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, ready to do battle with the crazy lady if need be. That seemed to Edith almost as terrible as being crazy. Why would you look forward to trouble?
Esmerelda began to sing. She started so softly that at first Edith couldn’t be sure but she concentrated, and she turned her head in Esmerelda’s direction, and yes, that soft crooning was Esmerelda singing. And she had really a surprisingly lovely voice. This was turning out to be an extraordinary morning, most extraordinary. Edith almost closed her eyes. And then Esmerelda ruined it with another shout. Edith pushed her chair back and signaled to Pablo for her check. Pablo misunderstood, bringing Edith another cup of coffee. “The check,” she said to Pablo, “l’addition,” and she scribbled in the air with an imaginary pen.
And then Esmerelda began singing again, but this time she kept it up, and her body began to move with the song and Edith felt like swaying too, like a big top-heavy flower on a stem. She could hear bits and pieces of “Blue Moon” riding somewhere under the surface of Esmerelda’s voice, like something borne along by water. Edith found herself gripping the plastic arms of her chair, holding her breath, so as not to be carried away. It was a most unexpectedly pleasant feeling.
(For a time after Edith’s mother’s death, Edith had sat and clung to the arms of the old green chair, as if otherwise she might blow away, or be carried upward on a draft, as if she had no gravity of her own anymore, and when she had spoken out loud in the empty room her voice had seemed to come from a corner of the ceiling instead of her own body. She had been unable to move and had wondered briefly if it might not be due to the woodwork, which was so very dark, and she made plans to have it painted as soon as she could speak.)
Somebody applauded when Esmerelda finished her song. Edith saw Pablo, a sarcastic smile on his face, clapping in the doorway. Oh dear, thought Edith, but fortunately Esmerelda paid no attention. She turned to leave, blowing a kiss at the flower store, waving good-bye. Maybe she is in love with the flowers, thought Edith. Maybe it isn’t Hector at all. As Esmerelda drew near the café again Edith picked up her coffee. She held the cup halfway to her lips, elbows resting on the table. She sat perfectly still, so as to be invisible. Esmerelda stopped right next to Edith’s table. Edith could see the dangling lining of her terrible coat. “Miedabee,” said Esmerelda. Her voice was hoarse. Miedabee? Edith began to lift the cup to her lips with an air of what she hoped was nonchalance, but her hands were shaking. “Miedabee,” Esmerelda repeated, more urgently, and Edith found herself turning to look directly at Esmerelda and into her eyes, which were dark as cherries. “Mind the bee,” said Esmerelda, pointing to Edith’s cup. A yellow jacket sat on the rim, interested perhaps in Edith’s lipstick.
“Oh,” cried Edith, dropping everything. “Oh!” she cried, getting up from the table and waving her hands about, making a small commotion. Esmerelda nodded her head several times and then continued on her way. “Thank you very much,” called Edith, but Esmerelda did not turn around. From the back, Esmerelda’s coat looked almost jaunty. It rode up a bit, giving her an incongruously schoolgirl look. Half a block away, Esmerelda started shouting. “Well, that would have been really quite nasty,” said Edith right out loud. “How terribly nice of that woman,” Edith said next, somewhat more insistently, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. How pathetic the young are, thought Edith, so self-absorbed.
Hector now returned to his store, nodding and chatting with a few people who called out to him. He waved at Edith and she waved back. Everything seemed refreshed, like after a good rain. Edith paid her bill, leaving Pablo a good tip as usual, although he had fairly thrown the check on the table, scolding her, Edith knew, for speaking to the no-good lady. Edith strolled over to the flower store and bent down on the sidewalk and stuck her face in the flowers. She bought a large bouquet. Some of these she deposited carefully in the trashbasket on the corner where Esmerelda would be sure to find them. Lilacs. But there were still a great many flowers left, and these Edith carried home in her arms, already singing under her breath.
THERE WAS THE sound of something ripping as Edith sat down, and each adjustment of her body produced further ripping sounds. Could it possibly be the material of the banquette on which she was now sitting? Edith very much hoped so. She tried a tiny experiment with her left leg, moving it infinitesimally to the right, really almost no more than flexing her thigh, and she heard material tear again. This was very bad. It was not the furniture.
Edith was thus paralyzed. She was sitting in the downstairs lobby of the Angelika Theater, where she did not belong and should never have come, and now could not possibly leave. Ever. To make matters worse, there, across the room, she was quite sure, wait, she would put her glasses on, yes, she was certain she saw Ronald Colman, who had been an old beau of her mother’s (or perhaps this was his son or grandson, Edith realized), but whoever he was he would be certain to have heard of her mother, and perhaps remember Edith herself, Edith as a small child, and Edith called out as genteelly as she could, “Mr. Colman?” and as he seemed to turn slightly at the sound of his name, and although she did not like to raise her voice she did, calling again, “Mr. Colman? Ronald? Is that you?” and then he disappeared with a tall woman wearing a green shawl.
The movie was about to begin and everyone but Edith rose to enter the small dark theater. The usher looked over at Edith and raised his eyebrows, holding open the door, and she had to shake her head with as much sophistication as she could, trying to imply with one brief shake that she had already seen the opening moments of this film and shared what was possibly his view that it wasn’t worth seeing twice. Certainly not worth hurrying up off this nice comfy banquette to see twice. The usher waited another fraction of an instant and then he shrugged and stepped into the theater himself. Good. Edith was now alone. Bravely she put her hand round the back of her skirt, hoping it had been simply a belt loop tearing, that would be the best, the only acceptable damage, but alas her belt and both back loops were secure. But what they were holding up now seemed to Edith’s timid explorations the equivalent of a grass skirt. The whole thing seemed to have disintegrated on Edith’s body, every possible seam and dart. The material of the skirt itself was fast disappearing, like something in a laboratory experiment, as if Edith’s skin and this particular fabric were at war and one must destroy the other. Some chemical reaction. Well, at least it was she who was winning because everywhere that Edith should have encountered skirt, Edith now felt only Edith.
Thank god she believed in decent underwear. Where had she gotten the idea that she needed to wear something daring, and go someplace different? What had possessed her? Here she was stuck in a disintegrating faux leopard-skin skirt, one hundred and seventy-five blocks from home, while a man who might conceivably have turned into the love of her life had slipped away before Edith had been able to introduce herself. Re-introduce herself. And now, how would she get out of here? Edith looked around to make sure she was alone, to make sure the refreshment stand people were busy with each other, which they were; this was one of the advantages of Edith’s age and, it must be said, of her avoirdupois, and she stood up and tugged what was left of the back of her skirt round to the front. She examined herself and saw that if she held her pocketbook right in front, like one of those Scottish chiefs, and if she affected a sort of limp, she might just make it into the street and thence into the first cab she saw. No matter what kind of driver it was, she would get in. Even if he drove across three lanes of traffic to screech to a halt halfway up the curb, she would get in. She no longer cared. She nearly wept with frustration to think that there, in what she now thought of as the bowels of the earth, sat Ronald Colman, ignorant of Edith Tall-madge and their connection to each other. Edith limped to the glass doors, which she opened with her shoulder, and then she limped down the steps to the street, where she started to laugh, and couldn’t stop, and every fresh burst of laughter created an accompanying sound of material tearing, and the more it tore the more she couldn’t stop laughing, it really was terribly funny, and she hailed a cab and, holding onto what was left of her skirt, she climbed in, gave her address, and continued to laugh for several blocks before she took out her hanky and wiped her eyes. There must be something intrinsically funny about the sound of ripping cloth. First it scares you to death, and then you get used to it. This made Edith start laughing all over again. Then she realized, vexed at herself, that it had not been Ronald Colman at all but David Niven. “Niven, you idiot,” said Edith to herself. Her mother had played opposite him in one of those most obscure British films in which her mother had been cast as a difficult heiress, which was exactly what her mother had been, come to think of it, among other things. Well, it had been David Niven and no wonder he hadn’t come over. Stupidly, she hadn’t recognized him without that little mustache. Or a son, of course, not the man himself. Or a cousin. Niven had become synonymous in Edith’s mind with that pencil-thin mustache, that most discreet of little mustaches, a niven she might have preferred to call it, as mustache was a vulgar bushy word, something vaguely sexual about it, possibly with things stuck there, dangling off. Well, maybe it was all for the best. David Niven would never have looked twice at a ridiculous middle-aged woman in a leopard-skin skirt, although the taxi driver did, lingering while Edith and her bottom disappeared inside the big front door. “They don’t make ‘em like you anymore, lady,” he might have hollered, but she had been too far away to hear. Thank god she was home, even if the old place was big now, and all the rooms echoed with the sound of her heels as she went up the wide front stairs.
EDITH’S MOTHER NEVER used the word pocketbook. “It’s a handbag, Edith, a handbag.” But whatever you wanted to call it, Edith’s was broken. The shoulder strap had worn out and broken in two. And it was her favorite pocketbook, roomy enough for ears of corn or cold roast chickens or beach towels, and although Edith did not carry such things, you never knew, and Edith couldn’t part with it. Someday she might go on a picnic. She thought perhaps Rudy Cervantes of Cervantes Shoes might be able to fix it with a few stitches. She liked Rudy. He had said to her, “I was sorry to hear that your mother died.” It was the lovely word died that did it to Edith, and she had found tears in her eyes. “Yes,” Edith had said, “thank you.” Died was a graceful, dignified word, and that was what her mother had done. She had died. My mother died. Edith had written the words on sheets of paper when she couldn’t feel anything. Mother died. And then she could.
It was raining this morning and as Edith placed her bag on the counter she began to hiccup. What is the matter with me now, she thought. She held her breath until her face got red. She pretended to swallow nine times, a sure cure. She searched the bottom of her bag for a packet of sugar. Hic.
The sounds of tapping came sporadically from the back room and—could it be possible?—a woman’s laugh. Edith blushed furiously. What was going on here? In a respectable shoemaker’s establishment? Perhaps it was the radio. Then, instead of Rudy another man appeared at the counter.
“Oh,” she said, her hand still rummaging through her pocketbook. What was she thinking? How could she leave her bag with anybody when she had not even cleaned it out? Her fingers encountered pens, paper clips, bus transfers, pennies. A folded copy of the Constitution that she had always meant to read sometime. And some sticky substance that was probably sugar. “Oh,” she repeated.
“I am Rudy’s nephew,” he said, “Luigi. At your service, madam.”
“Well,” said Edith, “How very nice to meet you.” Hic. She blushed. “Dry toast,” she explained, “and it is raining.” Then another hiccup. Edith wished she could disappear, as the last hiccup was one of those loud ones, so surprising that an old man reading the newspaper and having his shoes shined looked up.
Luigi was smiling. “I have just the thing,” he said and produced from behind the counter a jar of murky-looking fluid in which what appeared to be smallish eyeballs were floating. Edith shrank back.
“Cherries,” he said. “For ten years soaked in vodka. Ready today, as luck would have it. They are only for emergencies, special occasions.” And he dipped a small fork in and pulled one out for Edith. “Go ahead,” he said. “Don’t be shy. Eat.” Edith hated to hurt anyone’s feelings. She had good manners. The fire it lit in her mouth was delicious and oily and she thought she might have to sit down. “Oh my,” she said a minute later, opening her eyes again.
“Now there will be no more hiccups,” said Luigi.
Edith showed him the strap of her pocketbook. “I can do this for you while you wait,” he said, his hand resting on one of Edith’s fingertips. She withdrew it, being shy.
“Oh, that isn’t necessary,” she said. “I can come back.”
“Perhaps you want to remove some things? Maybe your wallet and keys?”
“Oh, just my wallet and keys, yes. I forgot, just in case I have to go home, or buy something of course, one of my errands this morning,” she said, blushing again. She didn’t want him to think she thought he might steal something.
Luigi smiled. His teeth were nice. “It will be ready in ten minutes,” he continued. “It is better you stay here— look at the rain and your shoes.” He glanced meaningfully at Edith’s new sandals, which were the Roman-slave type. She had bought them only yesterday. She had never worn anything like them before, although they probably did not go with the rest of her clothes.
“Oh no, I must fly,” she said, waving her hand meaningfully, suggesting many errands that wouldn’t wait. And then she sneezed.
He handed her a pair of Totes. “At least put these on,” he urged.
“We don’t wear Totes,” her mother might have said. “We have our galoshes.” But Edith thought it might be all right just once. She bought an umbrella too. There was something so nice about Luigi, even though he did smell a lot like aftershave.
Edith walked down the street. There was still a great deal of the day left. She stood in front of the window at La Rosita and watched the big white cakes go round on the revolving dessert stand. The small cups of flan. She held the door open for a young woman with a stroller. It was sunny now and the Totes on her feet felt warm, but she had no wish to hurt Luigi’s feelings and she kept them on. Edith walked toward the decrepit old Woolworth’s, where spring flowers were for sale on the sidewalk, placed on green stands that reminded Edith of baseball bleachers. Edith felt sorry for the plants, all a bit straggly from lack of pruning, and she bought a funny-looking fern. Halfway home, the fern in her arms, she imagined Luigi handing back her handbag all repaired and asking her to marry him in the same breath. She would have to decide in a split second, as such moments did not come twice in a life, but she already knew she would say yes.
FIFTY-FOUR AND Edith had never seen a naked man. Even Gloria Harris who was cross-eyed had seen a naked fellow even if he was just running down the street when she took her vacation in Paris. Or so she said, anyway. “It was flapping up and down like a little bitty frankfurter,” Gloria had said to Edith and then giggled while Edith tried to look dignified. But the truth was Edith felt left out. It hit her all of a sudden that she might die without ever seeing how God created Man.
She decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum. She remembered being hurried past the Greek and Roman statues when she was a little girl, although as far as she could remember they had mostly had it broken off or had a leaf on top. She knew she could buy an anatomy textbook but she wanted to find the mystery uncovered in art. At least there would be a little atmosphere. A little bitty frankfurter. But when she got off the M4 bus she realized that it was Monday and the museums were all shut. Oh well, she thought, monkeys, and started to walk down to the zoo. It was a warm day and Edith removed her jacket. But the zoo was closed for repairs. So Edith bought herself a nice bacon sandwich at the Gardenia Restaurant, which didn’t shoo you out at this hour, and then she went home.
There was a fuss on the first floor. Mr. Richards had somehow gotten loose again. The poor old man had suffered a stroke last year, and had lost the part of his brain that contained common sense. He was in the lobby wearing a towel as Edith came through the door and Edith nodded to him nicely. There seemed to be a good deal of soap still in Mr. Richards’s hair. “You!” he shouted. “Who won the Battle of Thermopylae! None of these idiots seem to know.” Edith swallowed: the towel was sliding off Mr. Richards’s right hip, but just then the nurse came running pink-faced down the stairs. She ushered Mr. Richards into the elevator. “You’ve been a naughty boy!”
Later Edith took down the encyclopedia. “The Battle of Thermopylae,” she wrote in her neat script, “was fought by the Persians and the Greeks. The Persians were the winners.” She slid the note under Mr. Richards’s door. The next morning he was back, ringing her bell. “You come into a room like the Spanish Armada, my dear,” he said, looking her up and down with a practiced eye. Mr. Richards had once been quite the ladies’ man. He winked. “You are a fine figure of a woman. My hat is off to you.” And the hat, which had been covering the most important of the naked bits of Mr. Richards, was whisked away and Edith, astonished, stared. Well, she thought, so that’s it.
It was a little sad, thought Edith. Not very useful looking. Of course she didn’t permit herself much of a look; she had turned quickly, or fairly quickly, and gone back inside, closing her door politely but firmly just as the nurse had appeared on the stairs again. “It is much too warm for a hat,” she heard Mr. Richards protesting loudly a moment later, “Much too warm for a hat, goddamn it!”
They certainly had their hands full next door.
EDITH’S MOTHER’S CAR had been kept in a garage all these years. It was a 1955 Buick Skylark, two-tone, white on top and red on the bottom. The insides were red leather and very comfy; a little tray for a Kleenex box was hidden under the dashboard and it swiveled out if you needed a good cry. It was in this car that Edith had learned to drive, and in this car that she and her mother had driven to the country in the summertime. They had even spent one week long ago on the banks of the Delaware River, where Edith had gone wading and later tried unsuccessfully to cook shad. When driving, Edith’s mother insisted, Edith had to wear sunglasses. “Glare is the enemy of the safe driver,” her mother had said. The sunglasses were tinted a dark blue, and Edith didn’t like the way the world looked when she wore them. Nevertheless, when she decided to take the car out again, she put them on. She sat in the car in the dark garage. With its battery charged the motor started right away, and it only had twenty-five thousand miles on it, every one of them driven by Edith herself. The mechanic had offered to buy it from Edith should she ever want to sell. So had the man in the parking garage.
A Saint Christopher medal did not hang from the rearview mirror. It was with a Saint Christopher medal that Edith’s mother had attempted to explain to Edith the concept of irony. The example her mother had given was that in the one accident she knew of the only injury done to the driver was from just such a medal, which had put out one of the driver’s eyes. Her mother had relished the story. “It put his eye out, Edith. Other than that, he did not have a scratch. Now there is a perfect example of irony.” Edith had nodded her head knowingly, but really it had taken her a long time to understand about irony.
It made her nervous at first, driving out of the city. She was afraid it would revive old memories of her mother in happier days. She decided to drive without the glasses. Even if it made her sad, she wanted to see what the world looked like.
ON MOST SATURDAYS since her mother had died, Edith had taken to driving into the country. She left early, right after her cup of tea (Edith was not partial to a big breakfast), and seldom had any particular plan. Sometimes she packed a sandwich or a piece of fruit. Today, she had taken the highway that went out past the closed-down factory on her way to Lambertville (there was a waterfall near Lambertville somewhere) but instead, on an impulse, she had followed a series of cardboard arrows that had brought her to a small house in the woods, a cabin really. A sign on old construction paper read simply HERE. TODAY. She slowed and stopped. There were a number of things in the yard, some broken furniture, a table and three wooden chairs, a battered chest of drawers, as well as a great many sheets and blankets, several towels, and a certain number of what appeared to be clothes draped over the porch railing. Ordinarily Edith would not have stopped at a place like this, but there was something glittering on a rack on the front yard that she just had to see. Without her good glasses she couldn’t make out anything except the colors, orange, red, green, and a curious midnight blue. It looked like a shoe rack. She parked her car and got out cautiously, smoothing her skirt as she stood there, looking first toward the bright objects and then, upon hearing banging, toward the house.
On the front porch a man was kneeling over what appeared to be a screen door, a hammer in his hand. She coughed politely. He was wearing a pair of yellow boots, and he looked young from the side but when he straightened up Edith saw he was probably close to seventy. He had blue eyes and his hair was sandy going gray, and as he looked at her Edith noticed that his hands were enormous, much too big for an older person. The hammer looked tiny in his grasp. Edith blushed; she felt ridiculously prim in her gray skirt and white blouse with the Peter Pan collar and her sensible shoes that laced. Well, she was who she was, nothing to be done about it. “I saw your signs,” she began. She walked a few steps toward the shoe rack, and her left hand was touching one beautiful bright orange dancing shoe. What an extraordinary collection! They were all high heels and open toes, they had delicate yet sturdy straps, and they were such marvelous glittery colors.
“Wife put them up,” he said. “You’re early.”
“Well, I hope not too early,” said Edith. She found herself trembling with pleasure over these shoes, but she did check her watch. Actually it was rather early. It was only seven-thirty. She looked at him again. His overalls were of a liverish color and the blue shirt he wore underneath was missing all its buttons, or at least all of them that Edith could see. She noticed, with a start, that his fly was open. It wasn’t exactly a fly, but those big snaps. He was not looking at her anymore, thank goodness, and she turned away hurriedly. It would be impossible for Edith to meet his eyes now and when he spoke again she tried to look at the clapboard behind his head, up where the porch roof met the siding, but she saw a hornet’s nest there, which unnerved her, and everything was so sadly peeling. Edith thought of getting back into her car and driving away but that would be embarrassing.
“Long as you’re here you might as well take a look around,” he offered. “Help yourself. I don’t see a crowd waiting at the gate.” He bent back to his work.
Edith approached the porch. She touched a few of the garments lying atop the old blankets on the railing. There were a number of sweaters with beads sewn in, from long ago days, and a few sweatshirts. There was a small plaid dress and a fake leather jacket with fringe, suitable for a little girl. There was also a pink tutu and several pairs of pink tights, all of them with stained feet. Edith had only wanted to see the shoes but she thought it was impolite not to look at everything.
A thin tired-looking woman came through the door to the porch, and she took the tights out of Edith’s hands. “These are not for sale,” she said, frowning. Edith had only been touching them. “Well, all right,” said Edith. “They’re probably too small for my niece anyway, although she does love to dance.” The woman didn’t say anything and Edith continued. “Of course she’s just starting, and it’s nothing fancy, just ballroom dancing. I admit it’s very old-fashioned. Not like children you hear about today.” Edith smiled and stopped. She had grown uncomfortable. She didn’t have a niece! She had made one up on the spot! She hoped they wouldn’t ask her niece’s name as she didn’t know what she would say. But the woman didn’t ask her anything. Instead, her hand rummaged in her apron pocket and withdrew a paper napkin and a tiny toy rabbit. Her face was pale and her hair the color that is no color at all. She wiped her face with the napkin, and disappeared back into the house, the pink tights in her arms.
Edith looked at some household utensils. A rusty egg-beater, a chipped bowl, a set of nesting bowls with the small red one missing. Edith knew this because Edith had a full set of well cared for nesting bowls in which she beat her eggs and let her bread rise, in which she made her batters for cakes and stirred her puddings. Even now, with her mother gone, Edith continued to bake.
“Cleaning out the room,” said the man, kneeling over the door frame and unrolling a large piece of screen. He had a staple gun in his hand now and it made sharp satisfying sounds as he stapled the screen into place. “Most of the furniture went last week. Can’t keep this stuff forever, I told her.” Several plastic dolls poked out of a cardboard box which the man shoved over to Edith with his foot. “How old’s your little girl?”
“Well,” Edith began, “she’s not exactly my little girl.”
The woman reappeared at the door. She looked at Edith, her eyes pink, then came out onto the porch again. She stooped and picked up the box of toys and she carried the box indoors under her arm.
“You going to keep everything?” The old man sounded impatient. “All this junk?”
“Nina might want them.” The woman stood in the doorway.
“Nina doesn’t want them. She wants new.” The old man shook his head.
Edith began to feel peculiar. She knew she should get to the point. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be worrying your wife. I was just looking at the shoes anyway. Hildegarde loves to play dress-up and dance. She really just loves to dance. She loves Ginger Rogers, although for myself I like Cyd Charisse. She was the partner Fred Astaire preferred, if I recall correctly.” Edith blushed and went on blushing.
“Never heard of either one,” said the old man. “I never did dance.”
Edith collected herself. She patted the front of her jacket and smoothed back her smooth hair. Thinking about Fred always made her feel like a big flower. “Well, Hildegarde would just have the best time with those shoes,” she repeated. “Are the shoes for sale?” asked Edith, just out of curiosity.
“Nobody around here to wear them anymore,” said the man. “Belonged to the wife’s daughter and she ran off six months ago.” He grunted. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t,” said Edith, nodding her head, and touching her hair with one hand. She had recently done the bluing thing to it and she was glad as it made her feel respectable and grown-up. It made for a nice barrier between her and whatever this old man was living his life about. An old dog, mostly beagle, limped across the dirt and slid under the porch. “Good-for-nothing mutt,” said the man good-naturedly. “Ran down to North Carolina, she did,” he continued. “I know because we got a card. If you’re interested you can have them for, I don’t know. Five dollars?” He shook his head. “Don’t know who’d want them, myself. But the girl spent a lot on them. Got to ask the wife.” He had the screen door on its end now and was attempting to fit it back on its hinges. His back was to her, thank goodness. Edith’s eyes strayed to a cardboard box full of picture frames. Some of them contained pictures still, and she reached for one with a photo of a serious little girl with crooked teeth. She bent down and picked it up. The cheap wooden frame was painted with what appeared to be red nail polish. She was looking into the girl’s face when the man startled her again. “That’s her,” he said. “That’s her when she was a little thing. You should have seen her a couple years later. Makeup? She grew up quick. That was the problem.” He came and stood next to Edith, she could hear him breathing. He took the picture out of her hands and placed it on the aluminum chair by the side of the door. “Didn’t mean for that to find its way out here,” he said, without further explanation. He turned back to the door and began hammering the bolts down into the hinges he’d lined up. Then he closed the screen door and wiped his hands on the sides of his overalls. He put the staple gun on the windowsill and put the hammer in his pocket.
Somewhere inside there was the sound of a television turned on and Edith heard a clatter of pans in the kitchen. From the back came the sounds of barking. “Carl?” called out a woman’s voice. “You got the dog?”
“Under the porch,” he yelled back. “Door’s hung. Come take a look.”
The woman came outside again. In her thin arms she was carrying a big paper sack. She didn’t say anything to her husband but spoke instead to Edith. “Did you pass a green Chevy Caprice parked on Route 118 today? Near the turnoff to the lake?”
“No, oh dear, I didn’t.” said Edith. “I didn’t come from Briscoe.”
“There’s a girl living right in that car. You drive by you give her these apples, will you?”
Edith hadn’t time to answer before the woman handed her the paper sack.
“We saw her yesterday, but he”—she pointed at Carl— “wouldn’t stop. I wanted to stop but he wouldn’t do it. Next time we went by with some sandwiches but she wasn’t there. It was a green car, old Chevy. She moves it around from place to place. You’ve seen it?” The woman seemed to have forgotten Edith’s answer.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I’m not from around here. This is just what I do on the weekends.” The woman’s eyes were so dark as to be almost black. Edith didn’t see a pupil anywhere in those eyes. “But if I see her I’ll stop. Certainly.”
“I’d be obliged,” said the woman. “Just if you give her these apples. They are washed and ready for eating. If she’s not in the car you can leave them on the hood, I guess. I put a roll of toilet paper and some napkins in there too. Don’t know how a girl lives when she takes to living in a car.”
“It’s not the way we do things around here,” muttered the old man. “Nobody lives in a car around these parts.” He was sitting in the aluminum chair now, the picture in his lap.
“If you don’t see her you can keep the apples yourself,” said the woman.
“How much for the shoes, Lil,” asked Carl. “The lady here is interested in them shoes.”
“Those shoes?” Edith held her breath as the woman’s eyes bored into her. “I got to get ten-fifty for the lot.”
Edith put the apples down on the floor. “Well, that sounds very reasonable,” she said, and she reached into her purse for the money.
“That’s a genuine bargain,” the woman said, her lips tight.
“Oh, I know,” said Edith, handing her two five-dollar bills and a fifty-cent piece. “I’ll go get them,” she said and went down to gather them off the rack.
“Do they fit right?” asked the woman when Edith returned to the porch. “Did you try them on?”
“Oh, they’re not for me,” said Edith quickly. “They’re for my niece.” But she did sit down on the top step and remove her right shoe. She was wearing stockings even though it was a warm day, and she slid her foot easily into the orange dancing shoe. They might have been made for her. “She’s going to be a big girl, tall like me,” said Edith happily. “I’m sure they’ll fit her fine.” The woman nodded although she didn’t smile and packed the shoes in a shopping bag and then she went inside.
Suddenly a little girl came running toward the porch, a big man running after her. The girl ran right up the steps and stood next to Edith, one grubby hand holding onto Edith’s skirt. This startled Edith. It had been some time since anybody had grabbed hold of her. Edith thought the child might be four years old. “I said get over here,” said the man, who Edith saw now was little more than an over-grown boy. The word punk came into Edith’s mind.
The girl shook her head. She was wearing a blue dress. The hem was coming down in the front, Edith noticed, and the buttons were torn off in the back so the dress hung off one shoulder. Edith reached down and put her hand on the child’s head. It was warm and sweaty and unlike anything else Edith had ever touched.
“Don’t be grabbing the lady,” said the boy with a glance at Edith. He looked angry.
“Oh no, it’s quite all right, she reminds me very much of my niece. Just so full of mischief.” Edith stopped herself, conscious of prattling.
“Did you do this, Nina?” he asked the child, coming closer and holding up a bit of cloth with a knot tied in the middle. His face looked so red. The child moved closer to Edith, popping her thumb into her mouth. “Did you do this to my shirt?” The old woman came out and pried the child away, taking her indoors with her. The boy went inside too and Edith could hear arguing, and then the back door slammed.
“Son-in-law. Wife’s daughter’s husband. Hard to believe, isn’t it? He’s no more than a brat himself.” The old man was speaking freely now. “He didn’t treat her good and she ran right off. What a mess, eh? Left the little girl behind, too.”
“I am so sorry to hear it,” said Edith, who was.
“Well, none of your worry.”
Edith said she had to be going. She said she didn’t need any help with her packages. She picked up her bag of shoes with one hand and her sack of apples in her other and went toward her car. Before she left, the woman ran down the porch steps and across the yard to her. Edith had just gotten in the car.
“If you see her, give her this.” The woman pressed a twenty-dollar bill into Edith’s hand.
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” said Edith. “What if I don’t see her?” But the woman was already halfway back to the house. Edith saw how thin and white her legs were.
“All right,” said Edith to herself. “If I see her I will. I’ll save it till I see her.” She looked in her bag for the car key. But now the old man was coming across the yard toward the car. He was wiping his neck with a red cloth.
“Hold up,” he called, although Edith had not yet put her key in the ignition. He leaned down to speak to Edith in a whisper. “Give her this if you see her.” Close up, his face filling her window, he seemed much older than before, and Edith saw how his mouth trembled when he talked, as if his lips might shake loose. He handed Edith a five and three creased one-dollar bills. “Last time we heard she was on Route 118 in a little lay-by,” he said. Edith nodded. “And here,” he said, “something for your little niece.” He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of pink sunglasses with rhinestones glued above the lenses.
“Oh,” said Edith, taking them from his hand. “Well, thank you so much.” The old man nodded, and backed away from the car.
As she drove toward Briscoe Edith searched the highway for signs of the Chevy Caprice. When she got to the lay-by she pulled over and parked, but there were no other cars. She pressed her palm to her face and tried to remember the hot-hair smell of a little girl. She closed her eyes. It had been so long since Edith was a little girl. Once her baby sister Rose had been missing for hours and everyone had looked for her. It was Edith who had found her in the attic. Forty years ago? She had been eating the sequins off a dress she’d found hanging there. Edith had tasted one or two sequins to make sure they weren’t poison, then she had led the child into the bathroom and washed her face.
Later Edith stopped in a diner (The Starlite) and asked if anybody had heard of a girl who was living in a Chevy Caprice. The old waitress just shook her head. Edith decided to call it a day. When she got back to the garage she sat in the car, thinking. Maybe tomorrow she would drive out again, take another look. She decided to keep the sunglasses in the glove compartment and she put the twenty-eight dollars under the backseat, where she would always have it handy should she run into the girl. Then she picked up her bag of apples and her bag of shoes and went home.
That night, before retiring, Edith tried on her new shoes. Sliding her feet in and buckling the straps (Edith had lovely feet, they were her best feature with her high arches and slender ankles) she thought of the girl whose shoes these had been, the girl who ran away. She thought of the girl in the car. She thought of Hildegarde, who didn’t exist. At ten-thirty, Edith put on her music. The record was scratchy, the voice familiar, unmistakable. She hesitated. Then Edith stood up in her big white nightie and her orange glitter shoes, and began to dance.
EDITH PICKED UP her mother’s ashes from the funeral parlor one sunny afternoon and carried them all the way home. They were quite heavy after all, but she carried them fifty-seven blocks, thinking to herself, Here’s Zabar’s, Mother, and here’s the Town Shop, where our underwear comes from, don’t you know, and here is where Teacher’s was that had the good eggs Benedict. And across the street is where we like the iced coffee and the movie theater used to be and now there is another one. And here we are passing Williams Bar-B-Que Poultry and now across the street is Liberty House and here is where we bought the air conditoner thirty years ago and there was a bookshop here once too. And there is the old man to whom we always gave money and I will again, and in another couple of blocks, past the other good coffee place (Turkish) and falafel and nearer to La Rosita but first here is Straus Park and let’s us sit down. Edith sat on a bench near the Queen Anne’s lace (her mother’s favorite flower) holding the pale blue shopping bag (Compliments of Riverside Chapel) that contained the cardboard box that contained her mother and held it on her lap like a baby. Edith placed the bag logo inward as she didn’t want to attract sympathy on the street.
That night Edith dreamed she was wearing black clothes. She dreamed her mother’s funeral was at the Metro Theater, with those steep seats, and as she passed her mother’s body she wept, although she pulled herself together since people were looking. Her mother, though, was not behaving in manner befitting the dead. She insisted on trying to get out of the coffin. It took several people to hold her down (all of them strangers to Edith). It was all terribly sad and hard to understand. Finally Edith took her mother’s arm and helped her up and together they walked into the lobby. Her mother was pleased and began to tell Edith a rhyme, which Edith couldn’t hear. Still, they had a pleasant time standing there together in the lobby and then her mother vanished into the street.
If my mother isn’t dead, thought Edith in the dream, whose ashes do I have?
EDITH STOOD IN front of the mirror in her underwear. “You are an anomaly,” said Edith to her reflection, the word sounding large and white and softish. Fat had never been a word Edith abhorred. Au contraire. She always rather liked the soft lapping sound of it, as something wonderfully reassuring. Edith surveyed her own vast expanse. Edith wore large white underpants (big as a sail on the shower rod), and what her mother called a good serviceable bra, which meant that it, too, was white and no-nonsense. Nothing sexy or disturbing in Edith’s undergarments. All the words for fat were nice, thought Edith. Plump, for instance. Could there be a more good-natured word? She turned sideways to look at herself from another angle. Heft. Well, that wasn’t so nice but at least it demanded respect. Fatty was not nice, but that was in the eye of the beholder and not Edith’s problem. Dumpling. Now there was a nice word.
Edith felt hot. She took off her underthings and lay down on her big bed. I am a territory, Edith decided, running her hand over her rib cage. Virgin territory, not yet explored. I am wilderness. Nobody has put a flag here. Briefly Edith imagined a little American flag fluttering above. I am my own domain, but mostly unsettled. Edith closed her eyes and imagined tiny populations swarming over her body, setting up camp on the vast white moon of her stomach, scrambling for purchase, unrolling bedrolls, afraid of the winds at night. “Oh ridiculous,” said Edith out loud and got up and got dressed. It was time to go out.
NO MATTER HOW hot the day, Edith wore all her underwear. That was what had kept her mother going so long, Edith knew, the fact that even when she was sick Mother did not just lie around in nightclothes. As long as she could stand, Mother wore everything a lady wore. Summer and winter. Garments for all seasons. Edith did the same. Ritual and discipline were important in a woman’s life and Edith didn’t want to lose her mind. Yesterday on the bus Edith had seen an old man write the word BUTTER three times in a blue notebook and Edith wondered what it would be like when she could no longer be sure of carrying the word fish in her head long enough to buy some. As if the word could slip away, swim back to some dark place, some liquid grotto in her brain, and Edith would be there in the street with no idea what she was about and have to go home empty-handed or with some unwanted purchase. A cellophane bag of balloons, say. Who knew what the mind might come up with? For this reason today Edith had written her grocery list on a salmon-colored index card, and placed it in her pocket. It was not too early to cultivate careful habits. “Capers?” she had written in her small neat print right under “Nice piece of fish” and “Lemon,” and out she went fully clad.
Now, having successfully accomplished her shopping, Edith was carrying one-half pound of halibut, two plump lemons, and a narrow green jar of capers. She nodded to the doorman, whose name she couldn’t remember because he was new, and walked into the back of the lobby and got in the elevator. She pressed 7 and the doors closed and with a familiar little lurch the car started its upward path. When the elevator came to a stop Edith stood waiting for the door to open but nothing happened. She looked at the rows of buttons and pressed 7 again. Nothing happened again. She pushed OPEN DOOR. Nothing. She looked above the door, where a passenger could note the elevator’s progress, and two numbers were lit, 5 and 6. That was unusual. What did it signify? She hopped, as if to give the elevator a jump start, but nothing. The elevator didn’t budge. Was she stuck between floors?
At the word stuck, Edith felt what she called a frisson of fear, but being a grown woman, she clenched the fingernails of her left hand into her palm and cleared her throat. She realized the humming of the tiny fan set in the ceiling had stopped and in its place was more silence. “Oh dear,” said Edith in a whisper, “where am I?” She looked at her watch, (two forty-two) and then held it against her ear for the nice reassuring little ticks. Well, at least that was working. Edith pushed 6. Nothing happened. She pushed 5, then 6: ditto. She pushed them simultaneously. She spoke aloud, one hand on the collar of her coat, saying jovially, “What’s going on here?” and the sound of her own voice followed by silence was disconcerting. She wanted to call down to the doorman in case he could hear her five flights up the shaft, but what could she call him? Yoo-hoo? She pushed the red alarm button and the faintest of bells sounded weakly and then died out. Somehow this frightened Edith more than anything.
“Oh dear,” she said, and then, “oh dear, oh dear.” Edith began to feel terribly warm. “ALL RIGHT!” she roared, surprising herself with the hugeness of her own voice, then addressed herself more quietly: “Take off your coat.” Immediately, Edith felt calm. She removed her coat and hung it over the railing along the back wall of the elevator. So that’s what this is for, she thought. It had always reminded her of a ballet school barre. Edith looked at her watch again. Two forty-four? Edith felt a strong need to raise her voice again. “GOOD WORK!” she shouted. “Good work,” she repeated. “Now what? Get hold of yourself, Edith. Concentrate. Read something.” She took the list out of her pocket. “Yes,” she said, “capers,” and she reached into the paper bag. “Capers, check. Halibut? Halibut, check. Lemons. Lemons. I can always bite into a lemon if I go crazy,” she reassured herself, “and snap out of it.”
It was disagreeably warm now without the fan, and after another flurry of unanswered calls for help she began to cry. “Stop it, Edith,” she scolded herself. “Remove your outer garments.” She undid her top button (rich man) and then she undid another (poor man), letting her fingers graze the soft collar of her cream-colored blouse. It was her second nicest blouse, silk and soft to the touch like the inside of a puppy’s mouth. Edith undid a third button (beggarman), and then she buttoned them all up again. Then she unbuttoned all seven buttons (merchant) and let her blouse fall open. That was much better. She didn’t want to marry a merchant, however, that sounded so boring, so she undid the button of her skirt. Chief. She was not the sort of woman a person asked to marry, being nearly six feet tall and plain-featured although full-figured, as they say. She was wearing, of course, a very pretty slip and her bra and garter belt and girdle and stockings. She fanned herself with the index card. She took several deep breaths. “I CAN’T STAND THIS!” yelled Edith, but only twice. There was no reply of any kind. Perspiring now, Edith pulled the blouse entirely out of the waistband of her skirt and then she undid the zipper. Help,” she called, and pounded on the door but only scared herself worse. She stepped right out of her skirt. “I HAVE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE,” she said, hanging her skirt over the rail. “I MUST,” she went on, kicking her shoes off, “OR MY FISH WILL SPOIL!” The bag of fish was on the floor. She wiped her face with the hem of her slip. A voice sounded through the door. “Is anybody there?” “Oh yes,” shouted Edith eagerly. “I’m in here and the elevator is stuck, and—,” but she was interrupted by banging. “Where is that confounded elevator!” shouted an old man’s voice and Edith recognized the voice of 6B, who was hard of hearing. He must be hitting the door with his cane. The noise went on a long time, followed by silence. Edith had a terrible thought. Was she imagining this? What if she had already gone crazy? What if this were not an elevator at all but a cell in an asylum? But there were no furnishings of any kind and no window, no slot through which a prisoner could receive food or mail.
Edith began shrieking, “GET ME OUT OF HERE,” but the panic passed, like weather in Colorado, where you could see rain in the distance hanging out of clouds like a Portuguese man-of-war forty miles away. Was it Colorado? She began shouting again and banging.
“You are in no danger,” a male voice boomed from above. “Stay calm and I’ll have you out of there in no time.”
“Somebody better come soon because I’m taking all my clothes off,” cried Edith, but there was no further communication. “Are you still there?” she asked, but heard only the high-pitched whine of some kind of machine and a renewed banging somewhere else. Big tears squeezed out of Edith’s eyes and she reached down and gathered her slip to pull it over her head. There. Then she undid one front garter and one back garter. Edith had always loved the way garters worked. So efficient, and she loved bunching the stocking together behind the little doodad. She slid a stocking down one plump white leg, and then she slipped the the other stocking down. She reached behind her carefully and unfastened the hooks of her bra, feeling it loosen and letting the straps slide forward down her arms, and there were her breasts free and looking quite as they always had, large and plump and floury. She threw her bra on top of the pile of clothes on the floor. Bang bang bang went something somewhere. The air felt nice on her body. It was like skinny-dipping, which Edith had only done once many years ago because of the necessity of doing it at night and Edith not liking the look of lakes at night or the ocean either. But the water had felt startlingly good and she had never forgotten it, so refreshing, like being a fish. “Fish,” thought Edith happily, and she considered unwrapping that too but instead removed her pearls and the little garnet earrings and placed them neatly on the floor atop her clothes.
At that moment the elevator began to move. There she was, keeping herself company, when the elevator doors opened on a big man with Otis Elevator written on his pocket. He looked at Edith and did not look away. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, and his smile was so infectious that Edith had to laugh. “It was so hot, Otis,” she said, and stepped out. He caught her in his arms.
ANOTHER HOT DAY and Edith is walking around with what she calls a snootful of tears. Her mother had repeated so many times in the last weeks when she was delirious, “I love you, I love you,” and Edith had looked around wondering whom her mother could possibly have meant and it has begun to dawn only recently on Edith that she’d meant Edith.
Crossing Broadway at l03rd Street she sees a girl sitting on the bench eating a lollipop. Not a girl, a young woman of perhaps eighteen? Twenty? It is so hard to tell. She has long red hair and a stretchy top on and is wearing only a pair of shorts and no shoes. No shoes! She has toenail polish on but her feet look dusty. She looks familiar. Doesn’t she live across the street? Edith has seen her grow up, hasn’t she?
Edith is shy, but impulsively she sits down next to her. The girl keeps sucking away at the lollipop, now and then brushing her cheeks free of tears. She has no shoes and no pocketbook. Unable to speak, Edith gets up and hurries into the bagel store and returns with a bagel and cup of coffee with milk and sugar to give the girl. She won’t have to say anything, she can just leave it on the bench beside her. “There’s a little something for you,” she can say. Then she will ask her if she needs anything else. It wouldn’t be so terrible. Mother left so many clothes and the girl might sleep in the spare room for a night or two. What would be the harm? At first she thinks she must have misremembered which street, was it 103rd or 104th? The girl is gone. Vanished. There is nothing left of her but the lollipop stick.