She's Come Undone (41 page)

What had derailed Dante from his Lutheran-school education and made him go north to Vermont? His voice, more baritone than I'd expected, wouldn't say. “Hello? . . . Who
is
this?” he kept asking. “Be patient,” I'd answer, but never out loud.

I made up lies about mountain air and back-to-nature to explain to my coworkers at the lab why I'd chosen Montpelier. On my last night at the halfway house, Mrs. DePolito made manicotti and meatballs and hugged me so tightly that I half wondered if I'd imagined all her meanness. There were crepe-paper streamers and dancing and, at the end, Fred Burden made a speech about me and gave me my going-away present, a twelve-inch black-and-white portable TV they'd all chipped in to buy me. I hugged Fred and whispered that my Etch-a-Sketches up in the attic were his.

In mid-August, Fred and his sister Jolene drove me to the Providence
bus station. The bus was late, the humidity a killer, and Fred looked pale as a mushroom. “Is it scary?” he asked me.

“Is what scary?”

“Doing this. Moving where you'll be all alone.”

For the first time, it occurred to me that, with or without a wedding band, Dante might be married. Or engaged. Until Fred's question, I'd imagined Dante in a sort of Lutheran sleep, lulled into inertia by his subconscious instinct to wait for me. “Not at all,” I sniffed.

When the bus driver announced we were ready, I squeezed Fred's hand and kissed him on that rocky road of a cheek. It wasn't nearly as awful as I'd imagined: my lips against those ruts and eruptions. When the bus pulled out into the traffic, I waved to Fred, who was crying, and wondered if I hadn't made a crucial mistake, obvious to everyone but me.

*   *   *

I had rented my basement apartment by letter: 177 Bailey Street, Apartment 1-B. The landlady, Mrs. Wing, had described the house's Victorian features but failed to mention anything about its being located at the top of a hill so steep that you practically needed mountain-climber boots. My suitcase and shoulder bag took on weight with every step. The palm of my other hand ached from the handle of my portable TV. I thought about that first day at Merton College, climbing the steps to Hooten Hall. About getting out of the cab and climbing that sand dune at Cape Cod. I set the suitcase down on the sidewalk and sat on it, looking back down at the town. It was dusk; lights were going on all over the place. “You're a whole different person now, reparented and everything,” I reminded myself. “Dante's waiting for you. Not that dead whale.”

The key and a note were Scotch-taped to the door. “Welcome, Miss Price. Please join us upstairs for cocktails at 4:00 tomorrow. Sincerely, M. Wing and C. Massey.” Real smart, I thought to myself: I'd given up a perfectly good life to drink sherry with old ladies.

Apartment 1-B was two dampish, furnished rooms—kitchen and bedroom/sitting room—both illuminated by bare bulbs that stuck out of porcelain necks in the ceiling. The bathroom had a cracked toilet and a shower head closed up in a kind of narrow tin closet. The floor of that shower stall looked cruddy enough to grow a disease.

The closets were roomy; the phone was already connected. An oval window above the kitchen sink looked out to the tenants' parking spaces like a two-foot eyeball.

I unpacked and had my supper: a cigarette and a travel-dented Milky Way I'd bought out of a machine at White River Junction. I set up the TV on the bureau across from the studio bed, hooking a coat-hanger antenna off the back the way Fred had shown me. “Charlie's Angels” was on: Farrah Fawcett snooping around some crook's hotel room, wearing just a camisole. “Ten-thirty,” I said out loud. I'd been in Vermont almost three hours without any physical proof that I was living in the same place as Dante. On TV, there was a close-up of a turning doorknob. Farrah sprinted toward the closet, her breasts bobbing.

In the kitchen I pinned a towel up over the eyeball window and boiled water for a cup of instant coffee. Some occupant before me had stuck “Keep on Truckin'” decals on the cabinets and left, in the refrigerator, a half-empty jar of Maxwell House, three Pabst Blue Ribbons, and an unopened jar of Spanish olives. The oven was thick with grease.

In the cupboard was a single ceramic cup with a Hawaiian hula girl built into the side, Mt. Rushmore style. They'd dug out her chest area and put a wire across and a pair of free-swinging ceramic breasts. “Shake 'Em, Don't Break 'Em” the cup said. “Honolulu Lulu's Novelty Shoppe.”

I went back to the bedroom and flopped down on the scratchy daybed. Back home at the photo lab, third shift would be just getting started—doing their address labels, checking their chemical levels. I picked up the phone to call, to just say hi, then hung up. You didn't telephone people if your new life was working out.

You're a dumb asshole for drinking coffee at eleven
P.M
., I thought to myself. Now you'll be up all night long. I thought I heard my doorknob click—imagined Dante opening it without even knocking, smiling, entering my apartment on the power of his intuition. Did I like that or didn't I? I faded off to sleep trying to decide.

*   *   *

By next morning I was up early, watching tenants' feet pass by my round window: nurse shoes and orthopedic scuffies. Teachers travel in summer, I reminded myself. He was probably visiting family or off somewhere on a religious retreat, praying for a girlfriend who'd love him unconditionally.

I walked out into the crisp, sunny day and down the hill to Montpelier. Red geraniums bloomed in storefront windowboxes; clerks whistled and swept the sidewalks. “He'll show up,” I told myself. “This place is Happily Ever After.”

The Grand Union was nearly empty. A row of checkout girls stood at their stations, chatting to one another in their matching red smocks and Farrah Fawcett hairstyles. I bought a bag of low-calorie groceries, a
TV Guide,
and a can of Easy-Off for that mucky stove. At the drugstore, I treated myself to a “Mount Peculiar” T-shirt and some rubber shower flip-flops. The purchases relaxed me, made me feel like a part of the town, some ordinary shopper.

Just before trudging back up the hill, I spotted a second-story beauty parlor on State Street: Chez Jolie House of Elle. There were two banners in the plate-glass window. “Walk In's WELCOME!!” and “Hey LOOK! The FARRAH LOOK!”

In the stylist's chair, I faced myself—drab, pouchy-faced Dolores with long hair the color of dirt. I chose ash blond from the color wheel. My stylist smelled like coconut. Over the snip of her scissors, the whir of her blow dryer, she talked a monologue. She was voting for Ford, not Carter, she said, because at least Ford was used to the job. She'd gotten six Crockpots for bridal-shower presents and had
had to give up jogging after her daughter was born because she just kept peeing her pants. “If Jimmy Carter wants to be president so bad,” she said, “he should have had those whitish lips of his surgically reduced. Or pigment-tinted at the very least.”

When I left three hours later, I didn't look like Farrah Fawcett, but I didn't look like myself, either; I figured it was a draw. On impulse I turned into a ladies' shop and bought a $25 salmon-colored camisole without once making eye contact with the saleslady. I went back to the drugstore for some pink lipstick and a blow-dryer of my own. At the top of the hill, my panting made me dizzy.

*   *   *

Figuring Mrs. Wing and C. Massey were widow-companions, I dressed in my white oxford blouse and calico skirt. But when I knocked on the door of their main-floor apartment that afternoon, I was surprised to find a bony old man on the other side. He was wearing a blue kimono, pajamas, and those scuffy slippers I'd spied. “Ah, you must be the new renter,” he said. “Come in, come in.” His eyes bounced off my Farrah hairdo and landed on the front of my blouse. “I'm Chadley Massey,” he told my chest.

Inside, chubby little Mrs. Wing sat surrounded by embroidered pillows and Chinese antiques. Her kimono was in blood-and-egg-yolk colors and her hair was a black pageboy wig. “How wonderful to meet you in person,” she said, smiling. She had white-powdered skin and yellow teeth.

Mrs. Wing assigned me a love seat across from her. It had carved wooden dragons for arms. Roving Eye squeezed in next to me.

I figured talking might quiet my shaky lip. “Nice decorations,” I said. “I'm getting a craving for egg rolls just sitting here.”

Mrs. Wing didn't seem to get the joke. She asked me if I was returning to the area or if Montpelier was new to me.

“New,” I said. Mrs. Wing nodded. Without looking over, I could tell old Roving Eye was checking me out.

“So are you two brother and sister or something?” I said.

The two of them shared a laugh. “Mr. Massey and I are close personal friends,” Mrs. Wing said.

“Live-in,” he added.

“Oh,” I said. “Different strokes for different folks, right?”

“Different strokes for different folks,” Mrs. Wing repeated, clapping her hands. “That's delightful. We'll have to write that down in our book, Honeydew.”

Honeydew touched me on the wrist. “Marguerite and I keep a notebook of the interesting colloquialisms we hear,” he explained.

“I didn't make it up or anything. It's from a song. Sly and the Family Stone.”

Mrs. Wing got up off her sofa. “Now if I don't write it down, I'll forget it.” Chadley slipped his hand into the space between our legs.

“You sure must love China,” I called to Mrs. Wing across the room.

“Oh, yes. Our passion for Orientalia was what brought Chadley and I together initially. Now what was it . . . ‘A different stroke for a different sort of folk'?”

“Marguerite and I are compatible in every way,” Chadley said. His knuckles skidded against my thigh. “As a ‘for instance,' we enjoy sexual intercourse nightly.”

My smile twitched. “Imagine that,” I said. Mrs. Wing sat back down and Chadley's hand went back to his lap.

“How old would you say we were?” he said. “Take a guess.”

They both had skin like wrinkled-up paper bags, but I figured it was in my best interest to aim low. “Uh . . . sixty-three? Sixty-four?”

“Ha! Not even close! I'm seventy-seven and she's eighty-one.”

“Really?” I said. “You don't look it. What's your secret?”

“I believe I've already mentioned it,” he said, winking. Then an oven buzzer went off in another room and he shuffled out to get us our drinks and snacks.

“So what brings you to Vermont, dear?” Mrs. Wing wanted to know. “Your letters were written with such a sense of urgency.”

I fed her my line about fresh air and nature.

“Oh, well, you'll have to meet one of our other tenants, then.”

“Really? Who?”

“Mrs. LaGattuta. Lovely woman. She's a nurse. Very active in the Audubon Society.”

“Oh,” I said. “Birds.”

“And then of course there's Mr. Davis, right across the hall from you. He's a lovely young man, a schoolteacher here in town. Has quite a green thumb, too. He's planted a lovely garden out back with—”

“A teacher, you said? How about his wife or girlfriend? What does she do for a living?”

“Why,
il n'est pas attaché,”
she said, smiling.

“What?”

“He's unattached.”

“Does his share of tomcatting, though,” Chadley called in from the kitchen. “I hope you like stuffed mushrooms, young lady.”

“They're Chadley's specialty,” Mrs. Wing said. “He sautées canned crabmeat. Then he crushes Ritz crackers with a rolling pin and . . .”

“Hi-Ho crackers, Marguerite. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work . . .”

Shut up out there, you little dwarf, I felt like yelling. “So this teacher guy likes gardening?” I said.

“Oh, yes. He's kept us in vegetables and herbs all summer long. Has the time to spend on it, you know, with his summers free.”

“Has time to entertain a chippy or two every once in a while as well,” Chadley said. “Overnight, that is.” The ice cubes clinked in our gin and tonics as he hobbled toward us. I'd meant to move nonchalantly to a chair for one while he was in the kitchen, but the information about Dante had distracted me. He sat back down beside me.

“Yes, well,” Mrs. Wing smiled, “that's fine with us. Chadley and I feel you young people have the right idea with your sexual revolution. Why, I was married to Mr. Wing for forty-three years, God rest his soul, and never once achieved an orgasm. Had never even
considered
clitoral stimulation until I was in my early seventies. Had I, Chadley, dear?”

“But we've made up for lost time, right, Honeydew?” Chadley said.

“Yes, Honeydew,” Mrs. Wing beamed. “This man is a precious gift.”

It occurred to me that Chadley and my grandmother were exactly the same age. If Grandma had ever heard about clitoral stimulation, I was pretty sure she had classified it as a mortal sin and dismissed it. She would die before she called someone “Honeydew.”

You were supposed to transfer the stuffed mushrooms onto your little Oriental plate with a porcelain-handled spatula. I hadn't planned on any chippies. Chadley watched a mushroom shake on its way to my plate.

“What sort of work do you do, Dolores, dear?” Mrs. Wing asked.

Getting a job was a subject I'd let myself ignore during all my planning and plotting. “Worry about that once you're settled,” I kept telling myself. But now I
was
settled. “Well, I've been working at . . . a photography studio,” I said. “But really, I'm an artist.”

Mrs. Wing's hands flew up in delight. “How wonderful! What medium do you work in?”

“Etch-a-Sketch.”

Mrs. Wing cocked her head into a question. Chadley's mushroom stood poised in front of his mouth.

“But mostly watercolors,” I added. “Paint them. Watercolors.”