18

 

       ELVIRA

 

    When I open the door I always expect to see him there, sitting in the dark.  I expect him to say, Come here and sit by me, Elvy.  Come here and keep me company.   

    But he isn't there, and as much as I expected him to be, it never surprises me when he isn't.  I put the pan into the sink and fill it with hot water and Lux.  It will soak while I change.

    Something is going on.  I saw Art talking to Susie and Wes right before they left.  They had their heads together about something, who knows what.  Whatever it is, I'll be the last to know, and it's getting so as I don't care.  They don't want me to know what they're up to, then I don't want to know.  I let my sweater fall over the chair in the living room; I might need it later.  The hallway is dark.  I always wanted a light switch put in there, but he never got around to it.

    The bedroom is yellow with the last of the day's light; soon it'll be dark too.  My dress and slip should go in the hamper but I might as well leave them out for tomorrow.  Nobody'll care.

    There's something very sad about this; a fifty-four year old woman looking at herself in the mirror, naked.  Every day age comes faster; driving anything out that might be there.  We used to lie there, in the yellow, watching the last of the sun, talking about how it would be.  And then that was over and done with, and it was never like us to talk about how it had been, so we just laid there and thought about it.  I knew that he was thinking about how things had turned out, and he knew that I was thinking the same.  It was lonelier then than it is now.

    This body was something then.  I tell Janice, Your old Mum wasn't so bad in her day, and she laughs.  These breasts used to stand up there all by themselves and there were boys who said I filled out a sweater like nobody else.  I recall a rose-colored sweater and what it felt like to have his hand climb up under it, smoothing its way up over my belly.  I recall that like it was yesterday.  We'd lie there and he's make slow circles all over me with his fingertips.  The yellow light is the same.  Some things don't change.

    I wouldn't have been caught dead in this housecoat then.  The hallway seems darker but the light from the kitchen lets me see where I'm going.  The water has cooled; I empty it and refill the pan and begin to scrub at it with the steel wool.  The face that looks back at me from the window is not the same one that used to look out here, waiting for the boy in the fine uniform to come home.  This face has lines around the mouth and lines at the eyes from the laughing I used to do.  I still laugh, but it is different.  Then it was just the happiness coming out of me like juice.  Now there's something sad about it even at the best times.  Even when my babies--the babies of my baby--make the joy just bubble up out of nowhere.  Even then.

    This face is my mother's face.  It has my father's nose and his chin, but it is her face.  It is the same face that watched me in the reflection of the window up there at the other house, watched to see if I ate my greens and did my books.  It is the face that told me that one day I would be a mother and that I'd bear it well because her family knew the fine points of raising children.  Lorraine, she said, had Daddy's blood.  I don't know what she meant by that except that maybe she wanted a reason why we turned out so little like sisters and so much like strangers at the same table.  Maybe she meant something more, I don't know.

    Beyond the face in the glass I can see Daddy still sitting in the near dark.  The Chevelle is still there, but I don't see Doug.  He's probably still up there, wandering over the acres that will one day be his          and Eric's, thinking about the way it will be, thinking about the future.  Daddy thinks he's up there looking for that deer, but he's up there because he couldn't get through a day without walking on that land, without cutting up through the orchard and dissolving like rain water into that mountain land.  Sometimes I think it will be the land that gets him and not the other way 'round.

    It'll soon be completely dark.

    The pan is clean.  I tilt it in the drainer to dry and wipe my hands on the front of my housecoat.  It was not so bad.  I like to see the children.  Susie and Wes come all the way here just to eat with us and be with us as a family.  It's not many that can say that.  There are them that can't bother to send a card.  And Lorraine was not so bad as she could have been          and has.  Sometimes I think I am too harsh on her, sometimes she shows all the signs of love and affection.  But then she will do something that makes me see that all the time she was being nice, her teeth were clenched, grinding away at each other.  It's like she was saying, See, I can be nice, as if it were something that was hard to do and she should be patted on the back for working so hard.  But I won't do it.  I won't pat her on the back for doing what should come naturally.  It should be its own reward.  And the food was good.  There wasn't any fighting.  And Jimmy and Derek          so sweet.  There is something of God in babies.  I think I heard that somewhere.  Church probably.  And they do not treated me badly.  It could be worse.  If my Earl were alive it would be different, but he's not and Art sits at the head of the table, and they do not treat me badly.