50

 

       ART

 

    What do you mean, I can't?

    You just can't.  You can't throw all this stuff out there for the junk man.

    I have to have some room.  

    That table was my mother's.  These are all antiques.  You can't just throw them out.

    Well, then we'll put an ad in the paper.  Sell 'em.

    No.  She paces to the other end of the room and stops, wiping a long streak in the sawdust on the hutch.  She gazes down at the end of her finger.  Slowly she shakes her head.  It'll never be the same, will it?

    The saw dust'll vacuum up.  I know it's a mess now, but wait till we get it all cleaned up and I get the new rugs up here.  I figure we'll

    I don't mean that.

    I look away from her and step to the front door.  The new storm door and jalousied porch still have the little stickers on the glass.  A truck rumbles down the hill, its brakes wheezing at the strain of the incline.  August is always the hottest.  The breezes stop, and your shirt sticks to you no matter what you do.  God, it's even hard to breathe.  Times like these, I feel sorry for him.  He has a hard enough time breathing as it is.  The street just smells hot and dusty.  Not a cloud in the sky.  Well, I say, We've got to do something with it.  When I turn around, she is still staring at the sawdust on her finger.

    She looks up when she realizes I'm talking to her.  What?

    I said we have to do something.  We can't bring all our stuff up with this junk in here.  There just isn't room.

    It's not junk.

    I pick up a gaudy green ceramic bullfrog from the end table.  Its one cut glass eye winks in the sunlight from the window.  This isn't junk?  And these?  I point at the stacks of cigar boxes.  Hell, I don't even want to look inside them.  I don't want to know what he's got in them.  I've worked around them all these months and I'm done.  I want this stuff out.

    Well, we can't just throw it all out.  It's his.

    I don't recall you being so worried about him before. 

    How would you like it if somebody took all the things you'd collected over the years and threw them out?  How would you like that?

    There just isn't room.

    You like this, don't you?  You really love it.

    So, now I'm the heavy, am I?  All I want to do is to clean it out and make it nice to move into, and you have to make it something          I don't know about you.  I get you the cabinets you want.  I paint the dining room the color you want.  You picked the carpet.  Now, when it comes time to get it all in and move, you make it seem

    What's wrong with the color I picked for the dining room?

    Nothing, I just

    Because you said anything I wanted.  You didn't say anything when I picked it.

    There's nothing wrong with the color!  Now what are we going to do with all this stuff?

    Can't we put it in the cellar?  Elvira'll have some room in her's.  She'd take some of it.

    But it's junk

    It's all he has.  There is a look in her eyes, a tilt to her head that I haven't seen since she was nineteen years old and wore her hair in a ponytail.  It takes me by surprise.

    But it's junk, I try again.

    I just think about us carrying all that stuff upstairs and him just sitting and watching, not saying a word.  Just staring.

    You act like we took him out and shot him.  That's a nice room.  Better than that little cubby hole he's been stuck in all these years.  Didn't I put his toilet in right beside his bed?  Didn't you make him brand new curtains?  He's got a nice view.  His own heat register.  What more could he want?

    I just see his face.

    Oh Christ

    You could have left the toilet down here.  There's a bathroom up there.

    Beside the refrigerator?

    Well, now he can't hardly come down the stairs if he wants to.

    I can just see you allowing a toilet in your kitchen!  We look away from each other.  Neither of us wants to risk breaking up and laughing at this point.  Okay, the furniture can go down to the cellar until we decide what to do with it.  But this junk--and it is junk--has to be gone through and thrown out.  Tell his to sort through it, and we'll put as much of it in his room as we can.

    Okay, I'll tell Elvira to come up and

    No.  We'll put it in our cellar.  I don't want it down there in that house.

    A minute ago you wanted to throw it out and now

    I said no.

    She nods.  Okay.

    Moving trucks'll be down to the other house next Monday.  That give you enough time?

    She just nods, strangely quiet.

    I won't be able to help much.  Jerry says he's going to need me more now.  I won't be able to get the time off.  We got a big order from Connecticut.  You know how it is this time of year.

    I just can't get over the feeling that are enjoying all this.

    What?  Shouldn't I?  I worked all summer.  Shouldn't I be happy when it's almost done?

    That isn't what I mean.

    What then?

    Nothing.

    No.  What?

    Nothing!  She walks away, shaking her head.

    I watch her disappear into the kitchen.  Ever since Susie and Wes were here she's been acting strange.  She sighs all the time, and her tongue isn't nearly as sharp.  I almost miss it; I lived with it all these years, and now that it's gone, I almost miss the flinching along my back that would come when she started in on me.  Funny the things a man can get used to and even sort of like after a while.  Like eating snails, although I still don't think I could do that.  Like this junk.  If I was to give in and let all this stuff here, I could get used to it; it's that that really scares me, that I could get used to it, that I could become like him.  And it would be so easy.  That's what scares me.

    The sun makes white streaks across my new concrete porch.  Even with the glass cranked all the way open, it's hot in there.  There is never a breeze in August.  I'll have to remember to put sealer on the porch before it gets cold out.

    I stand there for a long time, staring out into the street.  I must make a good picture, leaning on the doorway, that simple smile all over my face.  I must look like a real goof.  I laugh at myself, a chuckle that is for me and only me.  I don't know why I'm smiling or why that smile is worth the chuckle.  There is just something terribly fine about this, all this.