She's Come Undone (48 page)

“Well, I can't get that cuckoo bus trip out of my mind, that's all. At one point I got up out of my seat—stood up to get something from the rack overhead—a tangerine, it was. I had packed a tangerine and some Fig Newtons, you see, so my stomach wouldn't be empty when I took my pill. Then we went over a bump and I lost my balance. Went to steady myself and my hand landed in that hair of his. Well, I apologized of course—it was very embarrassing—my hand disappeared right up to the wrist. He was very nice about it, really. Took out this funny comb he had and said he was just glad I didn't fall . . . But the funny part—the part I was just lying here thinking about—was what that hair felt like.”

“What did it feel like, Grandma?”

“Well, I always imagined their hair would be bristly. You know, steely—like SOS. But it doesn't feel like that at all. I mean, it's stiff, yes. Of course it's stiff. But it's soft, too. That's the part that surprised me. The softness.”

I
n spring of 1978, Boomer and Paula put a down payment on a house going up at Granite Acres Estates. “I get to pick out my own light fixtures and kitchen countertops and everything!” Paula told me, loudly enough so that other Grand Union shoppers took notice. “You guys should come over this weekend! We'll show you our lot!”

That Sunday afternoon Dante and I drove up their makeshift road. Holes and dirt piles covered the hillside, as far as you could look. The finished houses still had their window decals on. “Look at these cheap-shit things,” Dante said, navigating around the potholes. “You can see the middle seam where they put the two halves together.”

Boomer and Paula waved to us from the half of their prefab house that had been delivered. It sat bundled in plastic on a flatbed truck.

“Now see, we're going to bisect the basement—” Boomer began.

“Right down the middle!” Paula interrupted. “Half for my laundry room and the other half for my crafts studio. Now that I have the space, I'm going to take on some students, have a minischool. Just decoupage and macramé at first, but I might branch out later.”

We'd been to Boomer and Paula's apartment once for Friday-night pizza. Their downstairs was an obstacle course of hanging plants in Velveeta-colored macramé holders that Paula had woven. Decoupaged greeting cards and studio portraits of Ashley covered the walls.
Back at our place that evening, I had turned their home—their life—into a cartoon for Dante's entertainment, had even gotten out of bed to imitate Paula's walk. “Jut Butt,” I nicknamed her. Dante laughed so hard, he couldn't breathe. Then he fell asleep while I sat up in bed, horrified at how vicious I could be toward a woman who'd just fed us.

“We get wall-to-wall shag carpet throughout the whole main floor,” Paula continued. “It's part of Package B. I'm leaning toward avocado for the color. Boomer bought one of those handyman magazines and guess what was in it? These plans for a bar that would fit just perfect in the family room! It's got a sink and a brass rail and a knickknack shelf. It even shows you how to upholster your own barstools.”

“Incredible,” Dante said, smiling over at me.

“Just think, you guys! One of these days, you'll be sitting around at our bar, sipping whiskey sours and saying, ‘Pass the pretzels.' Right, Pooh-Bear?”

‘That bar is a wet bar,” Boomer said. “It's got a sink.”

“I already said that, hon. I just told them. You should take that class of mine, Dolores. My own school—pinch me, I can't believe it!”

Ashley pulled at her mother's pant leg and Paula bent down to hear the secret. “Well, Ashley, maybe next time you'll listen to Mommy about drinking too much pineapple juice. Come on, we'll just have to tinkle behind the car.”

“But I don't have to tinkle. I have to make a stinky.”

Dante turned his smirk to the hillside.

When Paula came back, she thanked God for Wet Wipes and poured us coffee from a thermos. The men had gone off to look at a stump. In the cold air, Paula's talk burst out in white puffs.

“If you were a prude, I couldn't tell you this, Dolores. But between you and me and this whoozie-whatsis,” she said, clicking her wedding ring against the flatbed, “I was this close to calling up a
marriage counselor.
About Boomer and me. Got as far as circling a number in the yellow pages. But buying this house really woke my Pooh-Bear up out of hibernation. If you catch my drift.”

Ashley sat down on top of her mother's shoes and began humming a pretty song I couldn't quite recognize.

“I mean, he brings those handyman magazines to bed with him and next thing you know, he's clinging to me like stretch pants. I don't suppose a newlywed like you knows anything yet about dry spells in a marriage, but, phew, happy days are here again! Dolores, I'd be a millionairess if I had stock in the company that makes the cream I use with my D-I-A-F-R-A-M.” She readied down and tapped her knuckles against Ashley's skull. “Little pitchers have big ears,” she said.

Suddenly I recalled the name of that tune Ashley was humming: “Mairsy Doats.” My mother and I had sung it mornings before grade school, when she'd comb the snarls out of my hair. I didn't want Boomer and Paula's life or their prefab house, but I wanted their happiness. I wanted a little girl to sit on my feet and hum. Dante referred to Vita Marie's conception as “the time we got good and burned.” We were managing sex once a week.

On the way home, Dante said someone ought to gag Paula before poor Boomer went brain dead—that looking down at their foundation felt to him like staring into the abyss.

“Maybe
we
should think about buying a house some day,” I said.

He laughed. “With what? Our looks?”

“We have that money from my grandmother. I could start saving.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “With any luck, we can reserve one of those glorified Big Mac containers for our very own—right next to Boomer and Paula. The Mertzes and the Ricardos, happy as pigs in shit.”

The houses we passed on Route 38 were blurs. Dante always speeded up when he was angry. “Well, anyhow,” I said, “they seem real happy about it. I guess that's what counts, right?”

“Really
happy. Adjectives take adverbs—for the millionth time.”

“Really happy,” I repeated.

“Macramé heaven,” he mumbled. “Shag-rug nirvana.”

But I couldn't shake the idea that a house might make us happier—that settling Dante into a place of our own might even make him want
a child. People change, I assured myself. While I was cleaning closets the next day, I found a present Paula had given us the year before, a blown-up snapshot of Dante and me on our wedding day, decoupaged to a rectangle of wood. I'd put it away and forgotten it. Now I tapped a nail into the wall over our bed and hung it up in roughly the same spot where Grandma would have put a crucifix. I
believed
in our marriage—our future together as a family. Pictures didn't lie. We
were
happy.

I had done all the bills and banking from the beginning. “I'm just not into money—couldn't even tell you which drawer we keep our bankbook in,” Dante was fond of telling people. Now I began clipping coupons and adding what I could from my Grand Union checks to Grandma's wedding money. When I got our savings account to the $4,000 mark, I walked myself down to the bank and made a pinch-faced woman at a desk explain CDs and money markets and mortgage rates—over and over again until sweat formed over her top lip and I finally understood.

I kept my plan a secret from Dante, figuring I'd overwhelm him at some right moment. The more I saved, the bolder I got, throwing out glossy mail-order catalogs before Dante had a chance to see them and place an order. I hand lettered an index-card sign—“If it's not on sale, we can't afford it”—and taped it to the refrigerator. I Crazy-Glued the soles of my clogs back on rather than buying new ones. “Sorry,” I told Jehovah's Witnesses and Fuller Brush men. “Not at this point in time.”

One evening, in the middle of ironing our tablecloth, I committed my most radical act of all. The TV was running a Revlon ad. Just as the commercial was convincing me to try that new makeup—right at the verge of my humming along with the jingle and wishing I looked like the woman in the ad—I walked over to the set and threw the tablecloth over the whole business. The result amazed me. Without the pictures seducing you, TV was just a powerless talking ghost.

*   *   *

Mr. Lamoreaux, the assistant manager at Grand Union, called me into his particleboard office and told me to sit.

I had never liked Mr. Lamoreaux, who whistled “Hello, Dolly!” through the cracked-open door of the women employees' lounge instead of just yelling at whoever was taking too long on break. That very morning, Mr. Lamoreaux had forced a skinny old shoplifter to empty three tins of Underwood deviled ham spread from his pockets onto my conveyor belt in front of a whole storeful of customers. “You try living on my pension check, you son of a bitch,” the old man had told Mr. Lamoreaux, just before he cried.

“I'll be blunt,” Mr. Lamoreaux told me. “We've been watching you.”

I looked away, fingering my cowl-neck sweater. Whatever I was about to be fired for, I figured “we” must be him and the police.

“For four months in a row now, you've had the most accurate tallies of any girl at this store,” he continued. “We keep track.”

Being complimented felt the same as being accused. I crossed my leg and fiddled with my clog, prying apart my own repair job.

“We also like the way you conduct yourself out there on the floor. None of this foolish instigating and taking sides.”

“Yeah, well, basically, I'm a wimp.”

“A diplomat,” Mr. Lamoreaux corrected me. “We think you have the potential to become one of us.” His basset-hound face lifted unnaturally into a smile. “To start off, we'd like to try you out as head cashier, alternating first and second shift. We could give you a dollar five more an hour but, of course, you'd have to work some nights.”

While he talked about other possible promotions down the line, I did the math in my head. A dollar and five cents times forty hours equaled forty-two dollars a week more toward a house, minus withholding, a figure that offset the prospect of becoming
part of any group that included Mr. Lamoreaux. “So what do you think?” he said.

“I think I'll take it.”

 

Dear Grandma,

It's Tuesday afternoon. Ordinarily I'd be at work, but I'm getting this root canal done so I'm home taking aspirin with codeine. Last Sunday night I got a toothache you wouldn't believe. I mean, I was in PAIN! But that's not what I'm writing about. I'm writing about the present you sent.

When the UPS man delivered the package and I opened it up, I couldn't help crying. I remember those twisted candlesticks from our old house in Connecticut. I even found candles that smell exactly like the ones Ma used to keep in them. Bayberry. Things weren't always bad between Ma and Daddy. When I was little, I used to sometimes walk into a room and catch them smooching. I haven't talked to Daddy in years and years. Dante thinks both my parents are dead. He just assumed it one time and I never bothered correcting him. In a way, Daddy is dead, I guess. A dead socket—just like what I'm supposed to end up with after two more appointments with Dr. Hoskin. Don't mind me, Grandma. I guess I'm a little goofy from this codeine stuff I'm taking.

I hope you're not taking on too much, trying to clean up that whole big attic by yourself. When Dante and I get down for a visit (probably the end of this month if I can swing it), we'll help you with the heavy boxes. Don't you dare try to move them yourself.

We're doing great up here. We're both real happy and in love. Work is fine, too. I'm doing a pretty good job as head cashier, if I do say so myself. I'm the one who has to rotate the weekly schedule for everyone, so I got the idea to write it down in pencil first and post it in case there's problems or complaints. Everyone
really liked that. I bought a Mr. Coffee at a yard sale (never even used!) and brought it in for the lounge. Now everyone's bringing in plates of goodies and plants and posters, stuff like that. It makes it nicer with people not fighting each other. I used to wear jeans to work, but lately I've been wearing skirts and dress pants. The other day I asked my boss, Mr. Lamoreaux, if we could give out an Employee of the Month award. He's thinking about it.

I put up a shelf in our bedroom for the candlesticks—drilled the holes and everything myself. I walk over and touch them twenty times a day. They make me happy.

Love, Dolores

P.S. Remember—leave those boxes for when we visit. I love you, Grandma!

 

Dante started the summer of 1979 with a bad bout of insomnia. I'd wake on and off during the night, cracking open my eyelids to the sounds of his disgusted sighs and turning magazine pages. He frowned and twisted as he read under the little cone of light from his high-intensity lamp, taking the covers with him. No, he
didn't
want to talk about anything, he said—what was bothering him wasn't anything he could verbalize. By then, I had $4,800 in our secret savings account.

“How
much?” Dante asked, blinking. I hadn't meant to tell him; I figured it might give him peace of mind and get us both some sleep.

“Forty-eight hundred. Mim, this lady I know, says it's enough for a down payment on a house—a smaller one.”

“Mim?”

“Mim Fisk. A real-estate lady. She comes into the store.”

I'd never actually seen Mim Fisk
in
Grand Union. She usually picked me up out in the parking lot during my lunch hour and drove me around to possibilities in my price range, houses that had a lot of character but needed things like a new roof or a plumbing overhaul.