Something I didn’t mention: Last night on TV on the late night news, a story from the West Coast. An update on news that had aired several weeks before—a drowning, the victim a large man in his fifties, mentally ill, they don’t know.
I remember the original story. It got a lot of national play, and it was a hard one for most of us to take. In the middle of the day, the story went, a man waded far out in the ocean, announced he was ending it all, and then began thrashing and calling for help because he did not know how to swim. Desperate to help, a woman on the beach called the local police, then the fire department. But, as the story explained, tax revenue for the county was low for the year, affecting the budget for rescue, and all the policemen and firemen too had orders not to go in after swimmers. Regulations, their superiors said. No one was to be saved from the sea. Well maybe only small children. So first responders just stood on the sand that day and watched the man out in the ocean fight for his life and then drown.
Tonight’s follow-up covered a hearing in the town near where the man died. People who saw him spoke. Ten firemen turned out at the beach, they said, and not one of them got his boots wet. Fuck regulations, one speaker said. Those responders were all still men. They could have saved the guy if they’d been men.
So now this morning, again the dream. This time when the truck sails out over the bridge, local farmers gather below. They see the truck somersault high in the air, hit the ice, then start to go under. No one moves, they just watch the truck sink. And I am there in the crowd beside them all, staring dim-witted and hollow.
I awake from the dream weeping, my bed pillow sodden, the sheets twisted onto the floor.
And then there is something more. I lift my head. A scent in the air, wafting, familiar, autumnal. A slight singe to the air, now biting. Smoke, something burning. Out in my yard.
Fully awake, I rise and rush to the window. Mrs. Eberline, it can only be Mrs. E. I lean over the sill and look out. And I see her there two stories below me stoking a miniature bonfire, just under my silver maple. Stoking with what now look to be the silver maple’s twigs. Hurling them back at my house must no longer suffice, Mrs. E has moved on to a pyre. Open flames here this early dawn. With the morning breeze about to pick up.
“Mrs. Eberline,” I cry. And then I go for a roar. “Stop!”
With Mrs. E now temporarily back in her house, the bonfire in my yard doused and out, I decide to deal with this new crisis later and head off to work at the Project. My plan is to check in just long enough to tell the editors I’m taking the day off. I’ll say something’s come up, it looks like a friend is in trouble, and I need to go to him now. Then I’ll be off to Ben.
But as soon as I arrive at the Project, I know something is up there as well. The editors are all aflutter. And when I see what it is, I know then too my escape plan will have to wait. The Personality, it turns out, indeed is coming to visit. Marcie was right about that one. The Personality in fact is expected at any time, Dr. Steinem has just informed us. And with very little warning or for that matter concern, he has asked us to take her to lunch.
This is no small request on Steinem’s part. As I’ve said, we are not fond of the Personality here. She cannot be up to anything good, and we wish Steinem had not invited her. We would just as soon he were not banging her either.
“She will break his heart,” Celeste says. “It is why the woman is here, she has come to break his heart.”
Poor Dr. Steinem. We are all of us worried for him. But among us, it is Celeste who is most concerned. It is Celeste who looks after his welfare, who takes a real interest in him. Which is in her own interest as well, of course. Steinem is the reason Celeste stays employed. She could hardly be working anywhere else, not with all her long tea breaks, her many errors of every day. But here at the Project, until the Personality that is, Celeste was always Steinem’s favorite. He hired her first, he took her under his wing. We suspect there was even a romance, although Celeste demurs and we have no absolute proof.
Still, whatever Celeste’s feelings for Steinem, or our views, it is unlikely they will change anything much. There is just too much history with the Personality here. Frances is our clearest on the subject. She is coming, Frances says, it’s decided, and we are stuck with her now for lunch.
Frances likes to think she here knows the most about the Personality. How Steinem chose her, how she first came to the Project. It was after Sally Ann had turned in her early outlines, Frances says, mostly just cat-rat-bat-gnat sorts of words. And Dr. Steinem, seeing the need to supplement, also hoping to convince adopters of the good basal-reader news, decided audio tapes were in order. It was a simple idea, and like Steinem, dull. For each grade’s series, the Project would record long tedious lists of vocabulary words and offer the tapes free with the readers. Because, as he explained in the grant for the program, children must hear how new words sound before they can be expected to read them.
“‘Oh’ sounds before ‘oo,’” Dr. Steinem reminded. And then stressed the need for perfect pronunciation from just the right friendly voice. From someone with flair who also liked children. Or at least pretended she did. Which, Frances says, is why he proposed MaryBeth.
The fact is, Frances is not the only one here who knows about MaryBeth. For some time, I have had her number as well, it is not just at the Project I’ve run into her. A few years ago now, long before Steinem brought MaryBeth on board, I read a newspaper interview with her. I had at that point no reason to disapprove of the woman. But as I read on, I did.
I remember picking up the society-and-entertainment section of the paper that Sunday because I had read everything else and did not yet want to do the dishes. I do not often read the society-and-entertainment section. It is usually just photos of aged matrons posing on charity ball stairs. Or sometimes a feature article or two on a small-town lady entrepreneur, the latest woman to start a needlepoint birthday card shop. The article normally makes the woman out as some kind of pioneer, when really she’s just indulging her hobbies, with her husband, the surgeon, backing her. It is irritating, reading such stories, when there are women in this world who are pioneers in fact. There is the woman in this town, for instance, who started a low-income women’s health center. Among her other good deeds, this founder raised money for poor women’s flights to obtain legal New York abortions, when our state was not yet so enlightened. This woman has more than once been imperiled by mobs at her own clinic doors. And there are other such pioneers in this town as well, it is just that the papers don’t know about them. Although to be fair, it could be pioneers don’t grant interviews.
At any rate, the article on the Personality caught my eye. It was a syndicated story—filler our paper sometimes pays for—an exclusive with Miss MaryBeth Malone. Miss MaryBeth from children’s educational TV, specifically The Magic Garden.
The story was supposed to be just about the show, which was celebrating its fifteenth year. Magic Garden was a half hour of oddly informative hand puppets, it was one of the oldest children’s programs on TV. But as it turned out, the article was more about MaryBeth. She had a way of making herself come up. And even though she was not the show’s original host and was at that point relatively new, the interviewer kept asking her well how does it feel, fifteen years in children’s TV? He asked because he thought that he had to, you could tell.
From the first, the interview made me nervous. It was, for one thing, overly candid, and it occurred to me that MaryBeth and the interviewer had most likely been out drinking beforehand. More than this, however, there was just something strange about a woman who consorted with puppets. MaryBeth sounded suspect from the beginning, as when, right away, she took full credit for the Garden’s fifteen years. She said it felt good all those years. Gratifying, actually. Her show’s little made-up world had helped a lot of children grow up in that time. Young adults were forever stopping her on the street and thanking her for their fantasies.
I could not tell what the interviewer made of that comment, but it seemed to get his attention. And for the rest of the article he just let her go on. The two of them reminisced over the show’s long run and then generally went into a tell-all.
“Oh yes,” MaryBeth said, “and then there was the time we had to move on from Sampson, our original lion puppet. Mr. Bixler, our lead puppeteer for ten years, had retired, and the new fellow Drawley just could not get Sampson’s voice down. It was a deep voice, but the new fellow made it sound too gruff.”
And here MaryBeth paused the story to explain how we in television must walk a fine line between what is interesting and challenging for children and what will only frighten them out of their little minds. “In Mr. Drawley’s case,” she told the interviewer, “we were concerned his lion voice was just too scary. We were afraid we’d have bed wetters on our hands. So we had no choice, we had to get rid of Sampson.”
It was no easy task, MaryBeth continued. “Children are very involved in our show, our little puppets are real friends to them. We could not just let Sampson disappear and expect the children to forget him.”
But then MaryBeth stopped, she chuckled, the interviewer described her as chuckling, and she disclosed how she and the producers came up with the Magic Forest. It was the first time they used the forest on the show, and it was perfect, MaryBeth said, she didn’t know why they hadn’t thought of a forest before. They simply had Sampson run off to the Magic Forest. It was something the children could understand, how Sampson, a lion, would be happier in a forest than a garden.
“Although to be safe,” she said, “we broke the idea gradually to the children. We told them at first that Sampson had gone to the forest just to visit some lion friends and had Sampson write letters to the children. I read them aloud to the other puppets, to Arnold especially, Mr. Drawley’s new rabbit. The children didn’t yet know Arnold was Sampson’s replacement. They still thought Sampson was coming back.”
But then, MaryBeth told the interviewer, we let Sampson’s letters drop off, we let the children just not think about Sampson for a while. And finally one day, when we thought the children had got used to Sampson’s absence, we told them how he had written one last letter to them. That in fact Sampson wasn’t just visiting the forest anymore, he’d decided to move there permanently. He had written to say he had fallen in love. It was his old high school lion girlfriend, they’d been seeing a lot of each other in the forest. And now they were getting married and planned to settle down right where they were.
Sampson closed by saying he hoped the children would be happy for him. He would certainly have nice memories of them all and when he had little lion children of his own he’d make sure they tuned into Magic Garden every day. The children at home should know he would be there watching the show along with them.
“The Magic Forest was a lifesaver,” MaryBeth said. “The children accepted Sampson’s leaving. Their mothers wrote to say how happy they were for Sampson and his new wife. So that then, when we got into trouble on the show, we knew there was always the forest. We even changed the backdrop, we had a new one painted and added a hill and just over the hill, we had them paint the tops of a few trees. We had them put in a road sign, the kind with arrows, with ‘Magic Forest’ on the one pointing over the hill.
“Without the Forest,” MaryBeth said, “I don’t know what we would have done about poor old Rufus that day in the station’s parking lot.”
Rufus, the interviewer explained here for readers who hadn’t been following the show, poor old Rufus was the show’s real-life dog, a wolfhound-Airedale mix that throughout most of the show lay at the foot of MaryBeth’s chair. Rufus got an occasional close-up on screen, but he was not often written into the script. The producers did not think much of Rufus. He was not a particularly talented dog and mostly on camera he just slept.
But we kept him in the show, MaryBeth said, because a consultant, a child psychologist, once told the producers he thought it was a good idea, a real dog on a show like ours. With so many puppets around, a dog might help ground the children. And besides, the psychologist added, children like dogs. Rufus would help the ratings.
So the producers kept Rufus in the show, MaryBeth said, but they just had me pat him once in a while. There wasn’t much reference to Rufus, except that sometimes the other animals were not awfully nice to him. They teased him a lot. And the new puppet Arnold complained that Rufus was really too slow for TV. He, Arnold, a rabbit without any legs, could hop whole circles around him.
I suppose Arnold was right, MaryBeth said, because when I started backing out of my parking place that day that Rufus followed me out to the lot and suddenly realized he was lying right behind me, I honked but he just couldn’t get out of my way. By then, of course, I couldn’t get out of his either.
It was extremely unfortunate for the show. We could not very well tell the children I had backed over Rufus in the staff lot. But luckily we had already thought up the Magic Forest. So of course, it was a simple thing to write into the next day’s script that Rufus had taken up chasing squirrels, that he was last seen following one in the direction of the forest.
Naturally then, in a few days we received our first letter from Rufus. He had met up with Sampson and his wife, and as it turned out, Sampson was fond of squirrel chasing too. Every day he and Sampson went out after them. In the forest there were squirrels enough for all. Which is why, Rufus wrote, he thought he just might stay, although he sent his best to the children. He certainly would miss all the children.
And so there in an article you have it, I’d say. She is a dangerous person, all right, Miss MaryBeth Malone. We none of us at the Project like or trust her. Well, excepting of course Dr. Steinem.
The editors and I are now back in our suites, pretending to work at our readers while waiting for the Personality to arrive. But it does no good, we are all of us far too rattled, so that rather than wait for our usual break we all rush out early to the solarium. We stand in a circle at the coffee cart and pour ourselves full steaming cups. She is late, we say. We cannot imagine what has happened to the Personality.
And then as it nears ten-thirty, as we finish our second coffees and still wait for the Personality, abruptly Celeste has something to offer. In a pause in the conversation, apropos of nothing at all, again she brings up Emmaline. Last night, she says, she read once more about ghosts. It was helpful, she says. She picked up a few new ideas, specifically on how to get rid of them. Ghosts, that is, most specifically Emmaline. And Celeste would like now to tell us about it, she wants now to know what we think.
We none of us look at her or look interested. We are tiring of Celeste and her ghosts. We have other concerns, the Personality primary among them.
Frances says, “Oh well, Celeste, just do as you please. We trust you will make the right decision. I believe you were leaning toward compassion, correct?” And she adds then she’s sure compassion will work well, just so long as it’s not expected of her.
Celeste leans forward, glad she has finally engaged us. “Actually, the thing is,” she tells Frances, “I’ve decided to move on from compassion.” And she says she has been thinking things over and how it just seems that trying to grasp why ghosts hang on is not actually getting her anywhere—with Emmaline, or with anyone here. “As far as ridding us of her, however, there are a number of other things we can do, and I for one would like to give them a try. But I thought someone else might want to weigh in.”
And Celeste offers up then what she’s considering. “There is, as I mentioned, sage. Ghosts are not partial to it, you know. But the trouble with sage is you must burn it and force the smoke into each crevice and corner. It just seems like a lot of work, not to mention damaging to the lungs. So I read then a bell would do nearly as well, you just have to make sure, as with sage, that you ring it in all the right places, in closets and attics and crawl spaces. You have to be very thorough. The idea is to get the stale air, where ghosts prefer to hang out, moving again to discourage general loitering. One book even suggested vacuuming, if you did not happen to have a bell.”
Which sounded again to Celeste like a lot of work. As did hanging convex mirrors on each wall or scattering rice on the floor. “Although the latter involves an interesting theory,” she adds. For reasons it didn’t specify, the book explained that most ghosts, when encountering grains of rice, feel compelled to stop and count them. And because ghosts, it is known, are generally not good with numbers, they frequently forget where they are in the count and have to start over and over. If you put out new rice every night for a week, ghosts, the book said, find the prospect so daunting they soon leave for a less complicated haunt.
And then, Celeste says, the book suggested laying lines of blessed salt at all doors, which ghosts are not known to cross over. Or painting the doors red (ghosts, the book said, abhor red). “But my favorite,” Celeste says, “is the shoes.”
Shoes?
“Yes, shoes,” Celeste says. Here too, the book offered options. One approach, she explains, would be for all of us here to place a pair of our shoes, toes pointed in opposite directions, outside our suite doors every night. The conflicting directions of all those toes would confuse any ghosts who stopped by, and eventually deter them from the floor.
But the second option is even better. Which is to gather a pair of shoes worn by a ghost when still alive and place them outside the door, both toes in this case facing forward. The message would be clear to even a half-aware specter, and by morning both the ghost and the shoes would be gone.
Shoes, you say?
“Shoes,” Celeste says, and smiles her knowing smile. “They give permission to leave, don’t you see? They will say to Emmaline as nicely as we can that we are no longer in need of her services. She is free to take off and pass over.”
Like the others here in the solarium, I am weary of Celeste’s Emmaline, I have not been particularly listening. Instead my thoughts just as yesterday have turned back to Ben, well, back to Ben and me. Although it’s a relief to see they have not returned to where we left off, that is to our unfortunate undoing. The threat of lunch with the Personality, I must say, is gloom enough for one day. So then, while there’s still time before she arrives, a few thoughts here of Ben in happier times, little things I happen to remember.
For instance, Ben, have I mentioned, is a hiker. He hikes, he takes exorbitant pleasure in hiking. So this past fall that is what we did a great deal, we hiked, Ben and I, together. When we were not having dinner or iced tea in the grass, we would stand up and take a short hike.
Which at first was a problem for me, as I do not much care for going on walks. Except of course for my occasional turns about the sanatorium grounds, now in the spring for example, when the land is fragrant and fecund. Other places, other seasons, however, I would just as soon drive as walk.
But Ben is a hiker, irrespective of season. It comes, I think, from living so long in a Western state. It must be their culture, to get out and hike, to take on mountains and deserts if they must. No doubt it’s from all that ruggedness there, the raw terrain, the pioneer spirit that Westerners feel obliged to maintain.
But here in the Midwest, we do not have such challenging landscape. The soft curves of our loess hills and alluvial valleys do not call a man loudly to nature. Still, in the time that I knew him, given the smallest opportunity, Ben would lace on his boots and suggest we go out for a hike.
I should mention Ben’s hiking boots here. Ben owns a pair of good leather boots. They are wonderful boots all in all, the leather well oiled and worked in. Soft, lovely boots, but sturdy, reliable, well, something like Ben. They are impressive, these boots, and I think now one day I will buy hiking boots of my own. They may change my perspective on hiking, for that matter on nature itself. It could be just a matter of footwear.
But because I do not yet own any boots, when Ben and I hiked this fall I would put on my old running shoes. And then sometimes we’d just poke along the river for a while or tramp through what we call here “timber,” small stands of tall trees, odd outcrops of forest, planted by homesteaders a century ago to catch prairie winds in their branches.
And then, when we had run out of river and trees, mostly what we’d do for our hikes was go out and check on the crops. That’s what the farmers here say. When they want to get out of the house and leave whatever they should really be doing, they say well, they had better go check on the crops.
Slackers that we were all this fall, Ben and I, we did a great deal of crop checking together. With our eyes down, our sightline on furrows, it kept us from looking too far ahead.
And now Marcie has joined us in the solarium. She is worried, she says, the Personality should have been here by now. Marcie booked her flight here herself, it was supposed to have landed at eight, the taping to end by nine-thirty. But then before we have time to turn hopeful, to think maybe something went wrong, maybe Steinem took back his invitation or at last the old crooner got wise, the elevator doors open and there stands the Personality, resplendent in shocking pink.
The elevator is next to the solarium, there is only the hallway between us and so there is no escaping it, the six of us are caught huddled here with our coffees, idling. And for a moment we all just look back at the Personality, we just stand where we are and stare.
We are first of all, as usual on her visits, surprised at how short she is. We cannot get past it, how short the Personality appears, shorter than on TV. It must be all those puppets, we think, compared to those puppets anyone would look bigger on TV. But then today there is something new. What has got our attention just now is all that pink she has on. We cannot take our eyes off her ensemble—that bright pink linen coat in particular, voluminous and ruffled and tied at the neck with a bow that is really, we think, too young for her.
“Why hello there,” the Personality calls, which is also something new for us. Never before on her visits has the Personality actually managed to greet us. Dr. Steinem has taken up all her time. But today “Hello, hello,” she calls to us, her voice pointedly musical, and waves with the fingers of both hands. It is the way a preschooler would wave, and we know right there it’s a sign. The Personality has spent too much time around children, she can no longer separate them from her. Or for that matter, them from us.
She steps out of the elevator, and walks toward us. And although she is short, although she is in fact a rather squat little woman, she is also, we can see it today, really still quite beautiful. Her skin is dewy, her eyes are a startling blue, her hair a soft honey blond.
For Magic Garden, we know, the Personality wears her hair down long and wavy and many days she even adds ribbons. It is not becoming, we think, for a woman in her forties, well, mid-forties, to wear ribbons on a regular basis. But today, we see, she has pulled her hair back and up, very smooth. It shows off her bones to her advantage, she cannot have missed that fact. And although it’s true her hair is generally blond, now on closer inspection we can see that in front she is letting it go a little gray. It makes her look like she knows what she’s doing, this gray hair. We would be wrong to underestimate her.
“Hello again, dears,” she says to us warmly, although from the “dears” it is clear she has no idea who of us is who. And then getting right down to business, she lifts her chin and in a commanding voice announces she is here to see Professor Steinem. Would one of us be so good as to let him know she is here? She believes they had a ten o’clock meeting.
She says all this as though she buys it herself, that she is just here at last for their ten o’clock. She enunciates well, Dr. Steinem is right about her impressive elocution. And then when she is finished speaking, she settles herself down into a solarium chair, throws the linen coat off her shoulders, and smiles up at us calmly. As though she has all day to wait until someone brings her Professor Steinem.
We are all six of us still standing at the coffee cart staring. But then Marcie snaps to, says, “Oh yes, Miss Malone, I believe Dr. Steinem is expecting you.” Then she hurries off as though she isn’t sure but will certainly go check the appointment book.
The rest of us excuse ourselves too, that is, we pick up our coffee cups and nod at the Personality. We say how, well, we’d better be getting back to our desks. And MaryBeth nods and smiles up at us, still very cool, as though she thinks maybe we’d better be getting back too.
On our way to our suites, we see Dr. Steinem coming down the hall. He does not seem to be in any hurry, he even stops and says something to Lola, something about the second-grade art, how nice we’re on schedule again. He is acting quite normal, I think. We are all of us extremely normal here.
And then once in my suite—I have left the door open, but then that is normal for me—from where I sit I can hear Dr. Steinem say, “Miss Malone, welcome. So good of you to come again.” After which, he shows her back to his office. It is a long walk, his office is at the end of the hall and they have to pass all of us on their way. So while they walk, Dr. Steinem tells the Personality loudly how he has an interesting project planned for her. Though he warns her it is a rather big project this time, several tapes, it may mean several more trips. He understands that she may have to think about it.
We are none of us fooled here of course. Especially not MaryBeth. As they pass my office, she laughs at something Dr. Steinem has just said—something about the Project, how very well lately he thinks we’ve been doing, how our grant money just keeps on doubling—and I get the feeling then she is laughing at the Project itself, at Dr. Steinem too. The Personality does not care what anyone here thinks, you can tell.
As I’ve said, she is a dangerous person. Smart too, in her way—well, wily. And I think now she is onto us here at the Project, onto our secret as well. Something has tipped her off. And now that she’s here for her visit, sooner or later she’ll get around to it. To our secret, that is, about our readers. To our catalog and first fall series that she mentioned on the phone to Frances. The Personality knows only our vocabulary lists, the ones she reads for our tapes. She has no experience with our readers. But the Personality is not one merely to assume, as do others when they hear we write readers, that what we do here is actually turn out books. And now the Personality wants to see proof. Or at the very least, proofs.
So it appears it’s time to lay a few more cards on the table. About our little secret, I mean. It’s not only, as I’ve said, that we all of us here are inept. We are, it is true, but in fact there are some of us who are worse. Who have decided that rather than let our deficiencies run the Project entirely to ground, have instead taken things into our own hands. Have guaranteed in effect that no one need know the truth, no one need see even one woeful word of our inadequate little readers, or at least for as long as possible. Who have committed, therefore, not so much an error, as an error of gaping omission.
Well one of us anyway. Me.
To explain: When it became clear to the editors, well except for Celeste, that their stories were unacceptable, but they shrugged and still they kept writing—offering in their defense that they were just doing their jobs, the actual publishing was out of their hands—I’m sorry to say I at once saw the way out for all of us. Publishing, that is to say printing, is not technically out of my hands, since as assistant editor of Project design, I am our sole contact with printers. It’s a responsibility that has come in handy of late and also key to our secret, part two.
That is, I know our point here is to turn out readers, to turn out series of readers. I also know each editor at the Project needs her job and needs to write stories to keep it. But I have read the editors’ stories, board by stultifying board, and I know it would now be seriously wrong to take them any further. It would be wrong, for instance, to inflict them on children. Who might get the idea, or so I have reasoned, that life itself is like all those stories, when in fact it is not nearly so drab and drawn out or devoid of so very much meaning.
So partway into this year, I made a decision, with which the editors, minus Celeste, all agreed: Although the Project had promised to publish its series in time for the looming new school year, all our imaginative little tales of make-believe would instead remain just that—make-believe. We would have no inaugural fall release.
To this end, I have not sent one thing to a printer. Rather, as I finish each of the stories’ boards, I just place it on top of its predecessor, in a pile I keep hidden behind my suite door. Which goes for the catalog boards as well, which are not even yet fully inked. It is a risk, all right, but one I am willing to shoulder. For the good of the children. For the good of the Project. For our continued gainful employment. For as long as I can get away with it.
And to date, oddly enough, it’s worked out. Steinem, besotted and longing for MaryBeth as he’s been, has not checked our work all year. The grantors as well do not seem concerned that we have nothing to show for ourselves. We are a publisher that only pretends to publish—a big secret as far as the reading world goes and you would think a hard one to keep. But for two years now the Project has produced not one book, and so far no one seems to have noticed.
However, here is the catch. In the last month or so, I have myself felt a growing impatience, with the Project or myself I cannot yet say. I just know that some days I am tired of the pretending, the fooling, and all of the hiding.
Which in the beginning, I admit, I did not consider a problem. I have never been much of an employee. I have never, truth be told, much tried. But with so many days at loose ends, with so many work hours to fill, I find I look now only for diversion. I do less and less paste-up, I’m behind on my boards. My mind strays at every opportunity. I’m growing forgetful, I have twice left the hot wax plugged in over night, I have left the caps off my markers. The fact is, I’m beginning to lose interest in general here. There is, after all, only so long a person can hoodwink.
But then some days I think it is more. There are days now this spring, when I stare at the glow of my light table, that I find I am called away. And when I look up to see where it is I have gone to, I find a strange sad new distance to things. It is as though there on a fault line directly beneath me, life gives a tremendous jolt, wrenching apart into halves. And from where I remain then, dazed on the rim, I hardly recognize the other side. I’m left aching and rocking and holding myself with both arms. For months this is how it has gone.
I sit in my suite and shake my head hard once to clear it. But enough now of our little secret. The Personality, the Project, for that matter. Enough of these dreary thoughts of work and back to the sweet ones of Ben and me. With the Personality off to her meeting with Steinem, I know there’s still time for a few. Thoughts of Ben and the farm and the hiking, all that. But also our starry nights. It is something I haven’t yet got to. Those lovely fall nights in Ben’s grass.
It did not of course begin with the nights or the grass. As I’ve said, for the first month that we were together, Ben Adams and I were just learning to be friends, the kind of vigilant friends you manage to be when one of you is married. But then came the day, or rather the night, when we were no longer just friends.
It began with one of my visits to Ben’s to once again check on the crops. The day was warm, we lost track of the time, and stayed out in our furrows until dusk. Dinner ended up as leftover chicken, there was no time to barbecue that night. And then afterward, although we had finished late, Ben asked would I like to go look at the stars.
Now I happen to know the front room of Ben’s house came with a big red telescope. I also know Ben sometimes sits behind it, staring out at the night through the window. It makes me think Ben’s landlord did much the same, that he was a stargazer too, so I’ve no idea why he left his telescope. Maybe it was just a passing fancy of his, something to fill long farm winter nights. But I like to think it meant more. I like to picture the landlord there late at his window, searching the stars, bedazzled. That it was not all just earth he was tied to.
But tonight Ben is not thinking of his landlord or what it might be that beguiles him. He says only who needs a telescope, Margaret? The evening is clear, for October warm, and would I like just to go out and look up?
Ben is excited, he has in mind a show-and-tell, I can tell. Ben knows a lot about stars. And so I say well sure Ben, OK, although in fact what I’m thinking is how late it’s become, that it will not be so easy now driving back home. The road from Ben’s is rutty and dark with sharp curves hard to see even by day. Still, “Sure Ben,” I say, and try to sound like I think it’s a wonderful idea.
It turns out then in fact it is. Because when I follow Ben out his front door, incredibly there they all are, thousands of stars, making the whole night glimmer. Well who knew there could be so many stars? It is not like this in town, I tell Ben. We have stars there, yes, but they are only the usual few town stars, diffused and standoffish, stuffy. But here out at Ben’s the country stars shine, exuberant and free and, well, startling.
Ben walks a little before me, an old army blanket under his arm. He is headed for the farmyard’s front bank. “Here, Margaret,” he calls. And I can tell Ben has done this before, this is where he comes nights to watch the whole sky on his own.
He sits down and leans back on both elbows, so I do the same. And then pointing up, “Look, Margaret. Cassiopeia!” Ben says, as though she is some old friend of us both and how happy we are to see her.
“Cassiopeia?” I say, and peer hard at where Ben is pointing, as though I know what it is I am looking for. And I realize right there I need to stop Ben. I do not know my stars, I am not a tracker of constellations. Ben should understand this.
He does of course. It is why he has brought me out here. But I am saved then from a lecture on Cassiopeia the Queen and the stars that make up her throne, also why she occasionally chooses to hang from it upside down, because just then a night breeze blows over Ben’s farm and sends a little tremor through me.
Ben does not miss my shivering, nor the fact it is late, that the temperature has dropped considerably. “Cold, Margaret?” he says, and looks at me, then doesn’t wait while I pretend I am not.
Rolling onto his side, Ben reaches on past me, and pulling the far edge of the blanket, wraps it back over us both. We lie close in now, Ben’s head next to mine. The blanket feels warm and I smile. I look at Ben, he smiles as well. “Good, Ben,” I am going to say. “The blanket feels good.” But “Shh,” Ben says, putting his hand up to stop me. And then before anyone knows it, we are kissing.
Now here is something I have learned about kissing: Scientifically speaking, it is directly proportional to proximity. I read this once in a social psychologist’s report, although of course it’s not really news, or the psychologist’s point, considering the range of most lips. The psychologist’s point was that something more causal is at play, that even without real emotion involved, proximity by itself can promote kissing. Actually, the psychologist did not say kissing exactly, what he said was intimacy, that proximity between people promotes intimacy. But really in my case it is kissing.
I have never been the same since that report. It has ruined perfectly fine moments with men I have known, or for that matter with men I did not know. Because since that psychologist’s report, when I find myself physically close to some man, say when attending a crowded performance, if I make the mistake of turning to look at whoever is seated next to me, if he happens then to reach down at my side of his seat for his program that’s just slipped to the floor, I am taken by an irrational, overwhelming urge to lean in and plant a kiss on him, often on the nearest ear.
But with Ben, it is more now than just that we’re proximate. It is more than a passing stranger’s ear. Because now we are kissing and kissing and kissing. We cannot seem to stop kissing. And then touching and holding and rolling in close, then rolling up onto each other. Followed by even more kissing. It is surprising us both, I’m pretty sure. What is going on here under this blanket?
And now look at this. Things have taken yet a new turn. Ben is sliding his kisses down onto my neck, he is saying my name at the dip of my throat, “Margaret, Margaret,” over and over until it is almost a moan. And now moving his hands down the sides of my shirt, now under my shirt and onto my skin. Now down, down to my jeans.
I’m aware of only how close Ben is and how large and exciting and good. And also how surprisingly nice he smells, clean, something like rain. I lie still and feel Ben push up against me, feel the thrill of his body on mine. And my hands then reach out for him all on their own and fumble for his belt and belt buckle.
So that was our first night as more than just friends. After which, Ben and I stargazed a great deal. All fall, in fact, we could not either of us seem to wait for that time in the evening, after dessert and before one or the other of us took our leave, that one or the other of us would pause, then say well, here’s an idea. Want to go look at the stars?
But now it is noon and the Personality is only too pleased to have lunch with us, she says. We are all too dear to give up our lunch hour for her. She makes it sound as though that is what pleases her most, the sacrifice we have made for her.
But really, I think, what pleases her most is that so many of us have shown up, that we all seem to want to spend time with her. We do not, of course, tell her it’s because Dr. Steinem asked us to. And besides, that is not the only reason. We are all curious about this woman. We would not for the world miss lunch. Although it will also be tricky, we know, spending so much time alone with her. We will need to keep her diverted, we will need to keep conversation light. We will need in particular to keep her off the topic of the Project’s readers.
Because Dr. Steinem has asked that Celeste be our lead hostess today, she is the one to pick up the Personality at his office, to bring her back down the hall. The rest of us, however, are ready, we stand outside our doors waiting. And when we spot her then on the way toward us, we see she has put that shocking pink coat back on. She must think we are going out for our lunch, well she is in for a big disappointment.
But the Personality spots us then as well. She sees we are all out in the hall. And smiling and looking pleasantly surprised, she calls, “Oh, are we all going to lunch?” After which she tells us the part about how she is really, only too pleased.
Lola, who, as second lead hostess, has planned our lunch-hour itinerary, says oh no, it is our pleasure she is sure, and laughs loudly. Then she wedges in between the Personality and Celeste and taking the Personality’s arm, says, “We all just wanted to get to know you, hon. We’ve heard so much about you.”
So then, Lola and Celeste take off with the Personality for the elevator and the rest of us follow. We all fit in, although we are shoulder to shoulder. From the back, Frances grumbles that Sally Ann’s purse is taking up too much room. She could for once leave Mr. Bones behind, he does not have to spend the whole lunch hour with us.
Marcie taps the Personality on the shoulder and whispers that Mr. Bones is a puppet. “He lives in Sally Ann’s purse,” she says. Marcie figures, I suppose, she should warn the Personality now. Sooner or later Bones will offer up something most likely unfortunate at lunch, and it is better that the Personality is prepared.
Because Frances is hungry and does not care how Bones might behave at lunch, she says to the elevator in general that this is Mexican Lasagna day. Then, for benefit of the Personality, she explains, “The cooks here rarely stick to a single cuisine. Last week they served Szechwan ribs with a side of wilted collards.”
Lola starts the elevator and on the ride down, she stops briefly at the third floor. It is Lola’s way of giving MaryBeth a tour of Elmwood, as Steinem requested. That is, the doors open at third, we all stand staring out, and Lola says, “Well and this is Chemical Abuse. Alcoholics and drug addicts, mostly.” There is no one in the hall, we are staring at a door across from us, which is closed. So far it is not much of a tour.
But just as the elevator doors are about to shut, a man runs down the hall toward us. He is trying to catch the elevator before it leaves. “Wait,” he shouts. He is a large man, strong, a workman of some kind, he has on a plaid flannel shirt. His eyes open wide as he runs. He looks like he is in trouble.
Lola pushes the button for hold. “What are you doing?” the Personality exclaims in a loud whisper. She stops smiling and grabs involuntarily for Lola’s sleeve. “The man’s a drug addict,” she hisses, loud enough we can all hear. “He’ll want to knife us for our purses.”
She is going to tell Lola to start the elevator again, to quick, close the doors. But it’s too late, the man has made it. He stands for a moment panting, trying to catch his breath, and then he pushes into the elevator along with us. It is a tight squeeze, he has to turn and drop one shoulder to fit, and it leaves him facing into the top of the Personality’s head. She stands staring straight in front of her.
“What floor?” Lola asks the man. She sounds cheerful, like some elevator operator who is happy to have a job.
The man is still panting and doesn’t yet seem to be in any shape to answer, so Lola pushes the button for ground. She must figure it’s a pretty safe bet for a man like this on the run. The doors creak shut, but the elevator just stays put. We all wait, we do not ourselves move. There is only the sound of the man in flannel trying to catch his breath.
Then comes a loud clank in the shaft above us and the elevator begins to drop. It is moving very slowly, Lola looks as though she is about to say how slowly it is moving. But then the man in the shirt seems to have his wind back because he says in a low voice, “I come to turn myself in for drinkin’.”
He is talking to the Personality, it is her head he is facing. She only stares at the doors. “I come to turn myself in for drinkin’,” he says again, louder, as though maybe the Personality didn’t hear. “They said third floor, they told me at the desk, third floor, so I go to third floor.”
The man is shaking now, we can all feel it on the elevator. He is talking louder and louder and because the Personality isn’t saying a word, Marcie, who is standing behind the man, tries to be of help. “Third floor,” she says, and pats him once on the back. “Yes, you had the right floor.”
“But no,” the man says, very loud. “Nobody’s there, see? I get to third floor and I look up and down and there ain’t nobody there.”
“Oh well,” Lola says, and laughs as though that’s easy enough to explain. “It’s noon, they’re probably all out to lunch.”
Which is the wrong thing to say, all of us in the elevator know. There are drug addicts on third floor they keep always strapped to their beds, they do not all just go out to lunch.
It is not clear why the man could not find anyone on third floor. But we have reached ground, and the man is shaking quite badly now. Lola opens the doors and we are thankful when he starts to get off. But he turns then, he faces us, he looks frightened. “It will be all right,” Marcie calls from the rear. “Come back at one o’clock,” she says. “It will be all right at one.”
The man looks at Marcie, then turns and starts to walk toward the front entrance. Lola pushes the button for basement. But then, just as the doors are closing, the man turns and starts running back toward us. The Personality gasps, she is afraid he will get on again, he will want to ride with us now all the way to the basement, maybe have lunch with us too. But the man does not try to stop the elevator this time. He only looks at us through the gap in the doors, his face pleading.
“They won’t turn me away, will they?” he says. But the doors close and we do not any of us have time to answer.
We ride to the basement then and as we get off the Personality says, “Good god, do you get those people on the elevator often?”
She imagines the alcoholics and drug addicts have nothing better to do than ride the elevators all day. But Lola sets her straight. She takes the Personality’s arm and steers her under a large pipe toward lunch. “Oh no, darlin’,” she says. “Addicts take the stairs. We hear them up and down, up and down all day.” Then Lola offers, “It’s the crippled children who ride the elevators.”
The Personality looks surprised. “Crippled children?” she says. “You have cripples out here too?” And Lola says, “Oh my yes. A whole ward full, just the other side of our solarium—two floors up from the sick convicts’ wing.”
The others nod vigorously in accord. But then because I have not been contributing, I suppose, all the ride down and even now, because it’s clear I’ve not even been listening, “Isn’t that right, Margaret?” Frances says, and gives me a jab from behind.
I have not been attending, it’s true. The fact is, I’m still thinking of Ben and me, about our nights there in the grass. And how this fall in the dark at Ben’s farm, it was not only all starlight and kisses. How sometimes we would stop and roll onto our backs and just lie for a while very still. Until after a while more, someone would say, “There is something I want to tell you.”
It is not so unusual, I think. Lying outdoors in the dark can make people want to say things. To say something to someone that matters. And so now and then on our nights in the grass, Ben and I would just talk and tell stories. About times we were young that have stayed on our minds—swinging alone in a park at dusk, knowing the exact point where the sun dropped down. Seeing an ocean the very first time, the thrill of wet sand between toes. Small things we just happen to remember, things we’ve not told before.
There is one of these nights in particular I remember, and a small story that Ben had to tell. Which was a big story when he told it, I think, it’s just that now I remember only parts.
That night Ben said that when he was young, there was a redwood tree in his front yard. Ben was raised in the West, his family owned a small ranch. It was not so unusual for houses to have redwoods then. But this one redwood tree was spectacular. It was the biggest one on their whole ranch, so tall you couldn’t see to the top. And when Ben was little, he said, he was convinced it was his own tree of life. He took that redwood to heart. Every day he would lean in close to it, his chest pressed into the bark, and he would stretch out his arms on either side. If he tried very hard, he’d believed, he could reach all the way around.
“I just thought I should try for that tree,” Ben said. “I thought at the time it could happen. I would reach blind with both arms around that big tree and one day on the other side I’d feel the tips of my fingers touch. I guess I just thought that is what it’s about.”
I turned and tried finding Ben’s face in the dark. “What Ben?” I said. “What’s what about?”
Ben looked back, I could just see his eyes, a shimmer of light caught in them.
“All of it, Margaret. All of it.” He stopped. I could tell he did not much want to explain. But then, “Love, Margaret. Take love, for example. I thought maybe that’s what loving was like.”
Ben stopped again. Then watching me closely, his voice lower, “And if you were lucky, then dying too. Maybe something like dying too.”
Now at last we are at the cafeteria. Celeste, who, like me, has not said a word since we left our floor, pushes the door open for the Personality. “Well here we are,” she tells her. Then without saying anything more, she hands her a tray and a fork wrapped up in a napkin. It is all she can muster as hostess.
The Personality revives at the smell of hot food, she tries to look pleased to be here and thanks Celeste with a nod. Then she says brightly how she has been looking forward to lunch. She seems to have worked up an appetite on the ride down.
It is Mexican Lasagna today, Frances has called it correctly. As we start through the line we can see a woman who is serving large squares of it there halfway down, between the soups and assorted Jell-O salads. Usually the cafeteria offers a choice of entrees, today there was also fried chicken. But we are too late. The chicken, a server tells us sadly, was gone by twelve-fifteen.
We all take the Mexican Lasagna and “Over here,” Lola calls and leads us to an empty table. She has found us one in the middle of the room, we have to walk only a short distance to get there.
Our table is next to one with four men who are sitting in lab coats. In a low voice the Personality asks if they are from the convicts’ floor. She has not missed Lola’s point that there are convicts, ill convicts, in this building, and she thinks now these men in white coats must be the convicts’ physicians. “No, sugar,” Lola says, “they work at the animal lab.” In a building behind us, she says, where they do research on very small animals. And then Lola adds, “Vivisectionists, I reckon.”
Luckily, as we are eating later this noon, we have our table to ourselves. We do not know if the vivisectionists have heard Lola. We all just sit down and spread out our trays. And “Well, isn’t this interesting?” the Personality says when she has got a good look at her lasagna. The cooks have layered corn tortillas between the ricotta and sauce, we can see them jutting out in little triangles at the side. “Corn tortillas in lasagna, who would have thought?” the Personality says. And Lola replies, “Beats getting ’em cut up in yer Jell-O.” You can’t imagine, she tells the Personality, what they try putting in Jell-O around here.
We all take a bite. It is not as bad as it looks, we agree. And so we consider the lasagna for a while, how the chili powder the cooks have ad-libbed goes well with the lasagna’s red sauce, although it does seem strange mixed in with the ricotta.
But then because there is only so much to say about Mexican Lasagna, we soon find we have exhausted the topic. And for a moment we all just sit silently and try for another bite. Which is when, to fill the void or maybe just out of meanness, the Personality directs us to Sally Ann. Apparently she’s picked up on the graceless way Sally Ann slumps now over her plate and also on the oily locks in her food. She does not know this is normal for Sally Ann. She thinks only that Sally Ann could use a few pointers—etiquette, hygiene, posture—because then “My, Sally Ann,” she says. “Is that how we sit at table?”
It is a rude question, it was intended as rude, and immediately Bones is out of the purse. Glowering at the Personality from the table’s edge, he barks, “What’s it to you, lady?”
The Personality is taken by surprise, she jumps a little in her chair. It is only a small jerk, still we can tell, despite Marcie’s earlier warning, she wasn’t expecting puppetry at lunch. But then she recovers, she remembers who she is. She stares at Mr. Bones and, incredulous, asks, “What is this, a joke?”
“No, no,” Marcie says. Marcie is still anxious to keep peace. She feels responsible for the Personality. As administrative assistant, Marcie often feels responsible for more than her share. “Don’t you remember?” she says to the Personality. “I told you in the elevator, this is Mr. Bones. He’s a puppet.”
The explanation does not help the Personality, we can see. She has already figured out Bones is a puppet. She is only too familiar with puppets, in fact she is sensitive on the subject of puppets. She thinks maybe we are mocking her now with this Bones. And she plans to make clear, we are pretty sure, she did not come all the way to this rotting sanatorium to be mocked by some degenerate’s puppet. The Personality is not one to be mocked.
But before she can say so, before she can stand and walk out of the lunchroom as she has undoubtedly decided to do, Bones says, “Shh, listen,” and cocks his whole cereal-bowl head toward the cafeteria’s south windows.
As I’ve mentioned, the windows in the cafeteria are small and high, at grass level with the outdoors. Still they do let in light, and because they are open, they also now let in noise. So when Bones tells us shh, we all turn our heads and listen. And yes, there is the sound, wheels screeching on gravel. One, maybe two large cars, pulling fast into Elmwood’s guest parking.
We listen a moment and then “Drug addicts,” the Personality says, her eyes big. She must think some of the addicts from third floor, and maybe a few convicts from second, have got loose for the noon hour and are racing cars in our lot.
But she is wrong because we see the cars then, they stop near our side of the building, and here’s something new, they are the highway patrol. Two patrolmen now run past our window view headed toward Elmwood’s side doors.
“The highway patrol!” the Personality says. “There, you see?” She still thinks all this stir has something to do with drug addicts. The patrolmen have come to arrest some of the addicts.
But “Shh,” Mr. Bones says. He’s just heard something more. So we all listen again, and we hear it too. Something beating at the air above us, a kind of slow flapping like some giant flag caught in a steady breeze. Except now it grows louder and faster. It whips up its own high wind, oak twigs and a plastic cup and sections of newspaper whirl past the cafeteria windows.
Then we see it, the pontoon feet appear first, and we all know it is AirCare, the helicopter the university hospital deploys for all outlying emergencies. It is something brand new for the hospital and apparently a wise investment. Given the large drinking-age student population, our town is prone to emergencies, and since AirCare arrived, we have all frequently spotted it overhead. But this is the first time any of us has seen it actually land. Right here, right in front of our sanatorium.
We watch the helicopter hover, looking for a place to set down. The parking lot is full, and a patrolman is now directing the pilot to the grass alongside, to two large picnic tables waiting there. The helicopter turns and swings sideways and begins to drop for the tables.
“Look, look,” Mr. Bones says. He is excited. We are all excited, we had not counted on an emergency for the Personality’s lunch. It does add, we think, to the visit.
Then as we watch, before the helicopter’s pontoons even touch ground, a man and woman jump out of one side, each carrying leather satchels. They are quick, they bend low, heads below blades. Even in half crouch they run fast.
The patrolman runs as well to meet them. There is a great deal of wind now, it flops their trousers against their legs and whips the cap from the patrolman’s head. He lets it go, and grabs the woman by the arm. Then together all three of them run to the sanatorium’s side doors and disappear quickly inside.
We watch as the helicopter touches all the way down. Its blades continue to turn. It is an emergency all right, we all know. The pilot has kept the engine running.
And then everyone in the lunchroom starts to talk all at once, at all the tables around us. Everyone is asking what is it, do you know? What happened? AirCare normally flies just to the highway for crashes, it has never before landed at Elmwood. It must be something bad.
One of the vivisectionists leans across the aisle and says to the Personality he bets it’s one of the convicts. “Probably slit his wrists,” he says. “You get some of that type out here.” Although it must be serious this time, usually the infirmary just patches them up. “The guy must have done a real good job,” the vivisectionist says.
The Personality takes in this news. But she still holds with the drug addicts we can see, although we do not know why she favors them so, not with a lunchroom here full of convicts. Still, she says to our table when the vivisectionist turns away, “If it’s anything I bet it’s an addict.” Probably shot himself full of mayonnaise when the keepers weren’t there watching. And then she tells us how she once read an article about it, how some addicts, when they can’t get their hands on heroin, will shoot mayonnaise or peanut butter into their veins. “It gives them some kind of rush,” she says, although it cannot be good for them, is her guess. Often they die, but if they live almost always they end up in a nursing home. “No, it’s a drug addict, definitely,” the Personality says, and nods her chin up at AirCare.
Frances stares at the window where the Personality points and says, “Well yes, that may be. But isn’t it odd they haven’t taken back off yet?”
We all look through the window at the helicopter. Frances is right, it has been some time since the man and woman with the satchels jumped out, maybe ten minutes, although we’re not sure. But we can see the pilot looks bored. He is still in the helicopter, the blades are still turning, but he has picked up a newspaper and opened it. He must always keep something with him to read for long emergencies like this.
The Personality turns back from the window, she wants our attention. “They are a real problem, those drug addicts,” she says, tapping her plate for emphasis. If she had her way, they’d all be locked up in prisons. It is a mistake, she says, to have them running about a sanatorium like this, when people are trying to work. “It is a wonder,” she says, “Professor Steinem can get anything done here at all, with drug addicts all over the place.”
But then “Oh no,” Mr. Bones says. He has come out of Sally Ann’s purse again and is jabbing his head and the whole length of her arm at the window. “Oh no, Sally Ann, oh no!”
We look back at the helicopter and we see the pilot has cut the engine. The blades slow their speed, they turn slower and slower, then make half another turn and stop. It is not a good sign, no, oh no.
“Well there you are,” Frances says. “Whoever, whatever he was, apparently he didn’t make it.” And without waiting for the rest of us, Frances stands to leave. There does not seem to be any point now in staying. And she herself has deadlines.
We all stand up too. We push in our chairs, we start for the cafeteria door. No one is talking now. Even Lola does not have anything to offer, and it is quiet in the elevator on the way up to fourth. We do not stop for a view of any new floors.
It is all right, the Personality tells us. She does not much feel like a tour just now. She looks, we all notice, a little peaked.
One more thing I’ve just remembered about Ben. Ben and me and the matter of washcloths, an issue on which we initially disagreed.
That is to say, Ben Adams, when I met him, did not keep one single washcloth, he did not in the least believe in them. It was a sign, or so I thought then, of something to keep an eye on, an early warning of some covert feral state or general vagabond listing.
To be fair, it’s been an issue with other men I have known, they did not use washcloths either. I do not fully know why this is. It could be there is something unmasculine, or maybe just anticlimactic, about standing in the full force of a hot, sudsy shower—naked and hirsute, vigorously rubbing at armpit and chest, shaking back water into the light, enjoying it all immensely—and then stopping to dab with a small wet rag.
I do not have a feel for the gender implications of washcloths. I just know that when men are left to themselves, men who are single and live mostly alone, often in one-bedroom apartments, these men are unlikely to stock any washcloths. Which makes it difficult if you are to stay over some night and find in the morning you have nothing to bathe with but soap. You manage of course, you figure it out. But it is not the same, and it is not, I think, too much to ask of a man to keep a few washcloths. It’s not like they take up room.
Ben Adams, of course, is not single, nor was I planning a sleepover and bath. This waking mornings together is a step I’ve not taken with boyfriends, or at least with the general majority. The prospect was always too unsettling, and then again far too settled. So it was not something I was inclined to try with Ben Adams, although the topic did one day come up. A topic related, as I was getting to, to washcloths.
That day, Ben and I were just back from a hike. I had come unprepared. I’d worn sandals, it had rained, and I stepped into his bath then to wash the mud from my feet. “Ben,” I called, searching the cabinet. “Ben, where are the washcloths?”
“Washcloths?” Ben called back. “You want washcloths?’” As though this were some new vocabulary word he needed to try out in a sentence.
I should mention Ben Adams is not a man who is intent on housekeeping details. He has, for instance, not bothered with the matter of sheets. I know this because I have seen the sleeping bag that is draped the length of his bed. With a sleeping bag opened on top of a bed, you can just lie down and zip the bag up. You do not actually need sheets with a sleeping bag.
Still, there is no real substitute for a washcloth, I have found. It is not all that easy to shower while scrubbing, for instance, with a sock. And so, “Washcloths,” I walked out of the bathroom and said. “We need washcloths here, bud.”
“Right,” Ben replied. Then he shrugged and said he would look into it. By which I knew he would not.
It was that same night then, after we’d once again gone out to see stars, that Ben Adams proposed I just spend the night at his house. It was late, why drive home? He would make up the bed.
“No, Ben,” I said. Though when he kissed me and asked in a whisper was I sure, I could leave right at dawn if I wanted, and started again to slide his hand down my side, asking again was I sure, I knew that probably I wasn’t. Still, “No Ben,” I said, and grasping for straws, reminded him he kept no washcloths.
I consider it fate then, and yet another sign, that two days later Kresge’s dime store announced a big sale. We in this town are concerned for our Kresge’s, the shelves of late have looked meager, and it could be the new Woolworth’s that went up out of town is stealing little Kresge’s thunder. So we were happy last fall to see Kresge’s step up and mark down to Woolworth’s level.
I myself stopped in for a browse and it was then that fate took its turn. Kresge’s stocks everything and there at the back, next to a stack of thin bath towels, there gathered into bundles of bright pastels and bathed in a golden light, rose dozens and dozens of washcloths—not at the storewide twenty percent off but all on unbelievable half-off clearance. They were a store feature that day, a sign perhaps of low regard. But a sign nevertheless, and undeterred by the half-off stigma, I gathered up several bundles of twelve and made my way back to the cash register.
Flushed and excited, I drove to Ben’s farm to show him my lucky find. By another stroke of what could only be fate, Ben was not at the time at home. So I grabbed for the clothesline he keeps on his porch and started wildly to string. Ben has his own method for clothesline, it’s true. But what we needed now was something more triumphant and much higher. So with the help of Ben’s twelve-foot ladder, I stretched my new line from the house to the pines, then back again, next on to the flagpole and around the two oaks beyond. Then I clipped on the washcloths, all five nubbly dozen, cheery buttercup yellows, rosy pinks, baby blues. And when a breeze rolled in high, as I knew that it would, the cloths overhead flapped merrily, no, gleefully all around Ben’s half-acre yard. It looked like a happy farmyard announcement. The grand opening for some large open-air stall, a used car lot in holiday mood. Or maybe like high mountain prayer flags. Yes, like great strings of terry-cloth prayer flags, bright and healing and free.
When Ben pulled up in his truck then, he did not say a word. He just stood in the grass, looking up.
“Washcloths,” I said. “We have washcloths here, bud.” And pointed out we were set now for years.
I would like to say that delighted with my wit and generosity, Ben laughed, head back, full-bellied and loud. And he did. But then he did something more. Still smiling but now looking close up as he does, he took me by both my shoulders. “Thank you, dear Margaret,” he said. “Thank you.”
By which I knew we had just then moved on from washcloths.
We follow the Personality off the elevator, relieved to be back on fourth floor. It’s been a stressful hour for all of us, we are happy that lunch is over. And we are looking forward now more than any of us can say to returning Miss MaryBeth to Steinem. It is Steinem’s turn with her now.
While the rest of us stand with the Personality and wait, Marcie hurries down the hall to find him. Then, “Here,” we say to the Personality. “Here, let us sit out in our solarium. It is a good place to wait and recover.” Let us all just sit here and suffer awhile until Dr. Steinem arrives. And would the Personality care for a coffee?
Marcie comes hurrying back down the hall much too soon. She finds us out in our deck chairs and, breathless, tells us Dr. Steinem is tied up on the phone with a grantor, an extremely major grant funder. He had only enough time to tell Marcie he could not be disturbed. And that he sends his apologies to Miss MaryBeth, it is fortunate she is in our good hands. He should, he added, just be a few minutes more.
I can feel our collective hearts sink. We are stuck with each other those few minutes more that Steinem has ways of extending. And what occurs to us of course, well what is our concern, is that now the Personality will get around to our readers.
She sits back in her chair, and with a peevish little shimmy, drops her coat from her shoulders. She looks off toward the solarium glass, breathes deeply, gathers herself. And then just as we feared, she sits up a little straighter and seems now to have something to share.
But first she smiles her Magic Garden smile. I have seen this sort of smile before. I imagine it is the one she gave Rufus just before running him over. No, I do not like the look of that smile. It is our lunch, I would guess, what we and the drug addicts have just put her through. She is holding the lunch hour against us. And she’s determined to get even.
So now the Personality leans toward us. She smiles again, this time kindly. She just wants to be friends. And she turns to Celeste. “Well now, Celeste. It’s Celeste, is that right? Professor Steinem tells me you are writing about fish.”
It is related to nothing we have said so far. But it is angling toward the topic of our readers, all right. It can’t be the Personality is just trying for rapport, to show her interest in us.
And I am right of course because immediately then, before Celeste can answer the question, the Personality turns it back to herself, which is of course where her real interest lies. “Well yes, fish,” she muses. “You know, I once thought about having a fish on the show, a puppet, I mean, maybe a carp, but it just never seemed to work out.” The show’s producers were split on what a fish had to offer, the show’s writers couldn’t think of good carp lines. So, the Personality says, she finds it interesting that Celeste, all on her own, could come up with a whole series on fish.
Celeste stands just then at the coffee cart, brewing a fresh cup of tea. She pretends to be busy straining the leaves. She pretends she’s not heard this mention of fish, that she’s not caught the reference to Joe Trout. But she is thinking about it, you can tell.
The Personality turns to the rest of us then and she gets at last to her point. She understands, she says, our new readers will be shipping soon. She would be interested, she says, in knowing more.
The Personality is on delicate ground here, and we do not any of us know what to say. It’s bad enough, we think, that we must dodge around Steinem when he talks of our books as if extant. But now the Personality is here and she is curious. It’s just like her to ask what we’ve been up to.
She sits and takes us all in. We do not any of us say a word. We just sit in our deck chairs and look as though, actually, we do not wish to discuss it. But the Personality is interested. She does not want just to let the subject drop. Magic Garden, she says, is always looking for something to read to the boys and girls there at home. And then she asks what we were all afraid she would: So then, does anyone have a book from our new offerings she could use? We could consider it a kind of field test.
For a moment we all freeze. We look at the floor, we are silent. But then finally Frances speaks up. She has an easy out here, she sees. “Well no,” she says, she does not think her third-grade readers would do. “We are a little beyond Magic Garden,” she says. Her stories are all future perfect and riddled with subjunctive mood. MaryBeth needs something more basic. And then gesturing the Personality toward Sally Ann, “Really it’s the earlier readers you want. Isn’t that right, Sally Ann?”
It’s wrong of Frances to sacrifice one of us like this. Still, we all turn to stare at Sally Ann. Although we know she does not have a series either, we cannot help checking just in case, on the outside chance some publisher’s proof has magically shown up in her suite.
Sally Ann blushes. She is not used to so many staring at once. And the Personality says then, “Yes, Sally Ann. You must let me see some of your readers. Dr. Steinem informs me the stories are all quite lively.”
Which is a lie, of course. As I’ve said, Steinem has not read any one of our stories. And Sally Ann is far from lively. Someone is not telling the truth here, probably the Personality.
Sally Ann doesn’t look like she knows what to say, and as usual reaches for her purse and Bones. We watch her fumbling and yes, we all think, maybe Bones will come up with an idea. Although the Personality did not seem much to take to him at lunch, it may be that Bones now can help us explain ourselves. But Sally Ann has run into a snag. She cannot coax Mr. Bones out of her purse, her fingers all jam in his bowls. Sally Ann is in trouble, we can tell.
It is Celeste then who speaks up for us all. Ever since the Personality brought up fish, she has been debating whether to jump in here, to go into any kind of detail. But although she is not one to flaunt, she says later, it seemed the only thing really to do.
“Perhaps you would like to see some of our new Joe Trout readers,” Celeste says, as though she did not hear the Personality address her before. “They are part of our supplemental materials.” Celeste is being modest. She could have easily said they are part of our gifted series, our exceptional, talented materials. It is how Dr. Steinem’s proposals put it, although we all know it is really just Joe Trout.
Celeste is being modest, but she is also being a fool. She is, as I’ve said, not in on the secret the rest of us are. She doesn’t know not to offer what doesn’t exist. And I realize I have to step in here. “Well but I’m afraid that series is a little behind, it is still really just in flats. Remember, Celeste?” I say. Joe Trout is only in paste-up, I remind her, loud enough for the Personality to hear. It wouldn’t be practical to read him just now. The imposition would throw off the plotlines.
The Personality raises an eyebrow. She must wonder at all our reluctance. “No really, it’s fine,” she says to Celeste. She can just look at a few of the boards. It will give her the general idea.
I shake my head a hard no at Celeste. And she seems at last to understand. No, it isn’t wise to show things before they are ready, people will only criticize. So she says to the Personality that well, better yet, she can just tell her a little about Joe. And without waiting, she plunges in.
Joe Trout explains science to children, Celeste says. He came to her, that is the idea of a trout occurred to her in the first lesson. Which was the water, that is hydrologic, cycle, Celeste reminds us. She was at a loss at first, you can imagine. Where to begin? It was a cycle after all.
But then it just came to her one evening while waiting at a restaurant to be seated. There in the lobby were two large tanks, the kind where you could select your own seafood, trout and lobster mostly. And while watching them swim around and around, “Fish,” Celeste thought. How perfect. Yes, a fish could narrate the water cycle. Not a lobster of course, but a trout, a trout would do very well. You just had to think how it would look to a trout, Celeste tells the Personality, then explains:
You could show first the pond, the trout watching the rainwater fall from a cloud to his pond. Then you could follow him swimming that pond water into streams, and from streams into rivers, and out to the sea. And then, while he lay floating there on his back, riding the ocean waves, you could watch him watching that very same water evaporate back up to a cloud.
“All I needed really was a trout,” Celeste says. “And the rest was all pretty simple.”
The Personality says, “Well yes, it certainly is that. Simple.” And then she says it has been her impression that fish are rather stupid by nature. She cannot imagine they could teach a subject like science.
“Oh but trout,” Celeste says. “Trout are different.” Studies show they are exceptional for fish. Gifted, actually. They can be trained to jump, to carry things around in their mouths. “Like porpoise,” Celeste says, “You’d be surprised.”
“Yes,” the Personality says. She would. Then she looks down the hall, checks her watch. Yes indeed, she says, her voice trailing off, she finds Joe an interesting approach.
Which she does not, of course. She is not even listening now, she is only anxious for Steinem to return from the phone and retrieve her. “Does anyone have the time?” she says. She thinks maybe her watch has stopped.
“One fifty-five,” Celeste says. And then she says how, because Joe was such a hit that first lesson, she decided he should narrate the series. From water cycle naturally on to weather, then friction and how shadows happen. “And more,” Celeste says. She has so much more planned for Joe Trout.
The Personality, who is still checking her watch, says well yes, certainly. She would have expected that of Celeste.
The Personality has given up on us here. And wonder of wonders, she no longer seems interested in our books. She just shifts back farther into her chair and gives her coat an impatient tug. Dr. Steinem will never get off the phone, she is thinking, you can tell. And she will remain forever in this deck chair in this sanatorium full of addicts, trapped by a gang of vacuous editors who insist on discussing fish. The Personality is wondering why she ever thought visiting Elmwood was a good idea.
But then we hear Dr. Steinem coming our way. “MaryBeth,” he calls. “Oh there you are, MaryBeth.” He waves to her, and at the solarium door he smiles brightly at us all. He nods in particular to Celeste. He is pleased we’re entertaining the Personality so well. We have not all this time just let her sit reading magazines by herself.
“Henry,” the Personality says. Her voice is flat, she does not sound particularly glad to see him. She only holds out her hand from her chair. Dr. Steinem pats the hand fondly, then helps her stand and places her coat all the way up on her shoulders.
“We’re off,” he calls to us over his back, as he steers the Personality toward the foyer. And “Oh Marcie,” he calls from the elevator, and tells her just to take messages, he won’t be back the rest of the day.
When the elevator doors close, “Well then,” Celeste says, and walks back to the coffee cart for more tea. She is certainly glad to have had that little chat with the Personality. She would have hated to have her leave with no idea of what it is that we do.
And she looks then at Sally Ann. At least someone here was genuinely instructive. And turning to the rest of us, “Really,” Celeste says, “we all must learn to present ourselves better.”