“If you see her, give her this.” The woman pressed a twenty-dollar bill into Edith’s hand.
“Oh no, I couldn’t,” said Edith. “What if I don’t see her?” But the woman was already halfway back to the house. Edith saw how thin and white her legs were.
“All right,” said Edith to herself. “If I see her I will. I’ll save it till I see her.” She looked in her bag for the car key. But now the old man was coming across the yard toward the car. He was wiping his neck with a red cloth.
“Hold up,” he called, although Edith had not yet put her key in the ignition. He leaned down to speak to Edith in a whisper. “Give her this if you see her.” Close up, his face filling her window, he seemed much older than before, and Edith saw how his mouth trembled when he talked, as if his lips might shake loose. He handed Edith a five and three creased one-dollar bills. “Last time we heard she was on Route 118 in a little lay-by,” he said. Edith nodded. “And here,” he said, “something for your little niece.” He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of pink sunglasses with rhinestones glued above the lenses.
“Oh,” said Edith, taking them from his hand. “Well, thank you so much.” The old man nodded, and backed away from the car.
As she drove toward Briscoe Edith searched the highway for signs of the Chevy Caprice. When she got to the lay-by she pulled over and parked, but there were no other cars. She pressed her palm to her face and tried to remember the hot-hair smell of a little girl. She closed her eyes. It had been so long since Edith was a little girl. Once her baby sister Rose had been missing for hours and everyone had looked for her. It was Edith who had found her in the attic. Forty years ago? She had been eating the sequins off a dress she’d found hanging there. Edith had tasted one or two sequins to make sure they weren’t poison, then she had led the child into the bathroom and washed her face.
Later Edith stopped in a diner (The Starlite) and asked if anybody had heard of a girl who was living in a Chevy Caprice. The old waitress just shook her head. Edith decided to call it a day. When she got back to the garage she sat in the car, thinking. Maybe tomorrow she would drive out again, take another look. She decided to keep the sunglasses in the glove compartment and she put the twenty-eight dollars under the backseat, where she would always have it handy should she run into the girl. Then she picked up her bag of apples and her bag of shoes and went home.
That night, before retiring, Edith tried on her new shoes. Sliding her feet in and buckling the straps (Edith had lovely feet, they were her best feature with her high arches and slender ankles) she thought of the girl whose shoes these had been, the girl who ran away. She thought of the girl in the car. She thought of Hildegarde, who didn’t exist. At ten-thirty, Edith put on her music. The record was scratchy, the voice familiar, unmistakable. She hesitated. Then Edith stood up in her big white nightie and her orange glitter shoes, and began to dance.
SHOPPING BAG
EDITH PICKED UP her mother’s ashes from the funeral parlor one sunny afternoon and carried them all the way home. They were quite heavy after all, but she carried them fifty-seven blocks, thinking to herself, Here’s Zabar’s, Mother, and here’s the Town Shop, where our underwear comes from, don’t you know, and here is where Teacher’s was that had the good eggs Benedict. And across the street is where we like the iced coffee and the movie theater used to be and now there is another one. And here we are passing Williams Bar-B-Que Poultry and now across the street is Liberty House and here is where we bought the air conditoner thirty years ago and there was a bookshop here once too. And there is the old man to whom we always gave money and I will again, and in another couple of blocks, past the other good coffee place (Turkish) and falafel and nearer to La Rosita but first here is Straus Park and let’s us sit down. Edith sat on a bench near the Queen Anne’s lace (her mother’s favorite flower) holding the pale blue shopping bag (Compliments of Riverside Chapel) that contained the cardboard box that contained her mother and held it on her lap like a baby. Edith placed the bag logo inward as she didn’t want to attract sympathy on the street.
That night Edith dreamed she was wearing black clothes. She dreamed her mother’s funeral was at the Metro Theater, with those steep seats, and as she passed her mother’s body she wept, although she pulled herself together since people were looking. Her mother, though, was not behaving in manner befitting the dead. She insisted on trying to get out of the coffin. It took several people to hold her down (all of them strangers to Edith). It was all terribly sad and hard to understand. Finally Edith took her mother’s arm and helped her up and together they walked into the lobby. Her mother was pleased and began to tell Edith a rhyme, which Edith couldn’t hear. Still, they had a pleasant time standing there together in the lobby and then her mother vanished into the street.
If my mother isn’t dead, thought Edith in the dream, whose ashes do I have?
BIRTHDAY SUIT
EDITH STOOD IN front of the mirror in her underwear. “You are an anomaly,” said Edith to her reflection, the word sounding large and white and softish. Fat had never been a word Edith abhorred. Au contraire. She always rather liked the soft lapping sound of it, as something wonderfully reassuring. Edith surveyed her own vast expanse. Edith wore large white underpants (big as a sail on the shower rod), and what her mother called a good serviceable bra, which meant that it, too, was white and no-nonsense. Nothing sexy or disturbing in Edith’s undergarments. All the words for fat were nice, thought Edith. Plump, for instance. Could there be a more good-natured word? She turned sideways to look at herself from another angle. Heft. Well, that wasn’t so nice but at least it demanded respect. Fatty was not nice, but that was in the eye of the beholder and not Edith’s problem. Dumpling. Now there was a nice word.
Edith felt hot. She took off her underthings and lay down on her big bed. I am a territory, Edith decided, running her hand over her rib cage. Virgin territory, not yet explored. I am wilderness. Nobody has put a flag here. Briefly Edith imagined a little American flag fluttering above. I am my own domain, but mostly unsettled. Edith closed her eyes and imagined tiny populations swarming over her body, setting up camp on the vast white moon of her stomach, scrambling for purchase, unrolling bedrolls, afraid of the winds at night. “Oh ridiculous,” said Edith out loud and got up and got dressed. It was time to go out.
UNDERWEAR
NO MATTER HOW hot the day, Edith wore all her underwear. That was what had kept her mother going so long, Edith knew, the fact that even when she was sick Mother did not just lie around in nightclothes. As long as she could stand, Mother wore everything a lady wore. Summer and winter. Garments for all seasons. Edith did the same. Ritual and discipline were important in a woman’s life and Edith didn’t want to lose her mind. Yesterday on the bus Edith had seen an old man write the word BUTTER three times in a blue notebook and Edith wondered what it would be like when she could no longer be sure of carrying the word fish in her head long enough to buy some. As if the word could slip away, swim back to some dark place, some liquid grotto in her brain, and Edith would be there in the street with no idea what she was about and have to go home empty-handed or with some unwanted purchase. A cellophane bag of balloons, say. Who knew what the mind might come up with? For this reason today Edith had written her grocery list on a salmon-colored index card, and placed it in her pocket. It was not too early to cultivate careful habits. “Capers?” she had written in her small neat print right under “Nice piece of fish” and “Lemon,” and out she went fully clad.
Now, having successfully accomplished her shopping, Edith was carrying one-half pound of halibut, two plump lemons, and a narrow green jar of capers. She nodded to the doorman, whose name she couldn’t remember because he was new, and walked into the back of the lobby and got in the elevator. She pressed 7 and the doors closed and with a familiar little lurch the car started its upward path. When the elevator came to a stop Edith stood waiting for the door to open but nothing happened. She looked at the rows of buttons and p
ressed 7 again. Nothing happened again. She pushed OPEN DOOR. Nothing. She looked above the door, where a passenger could note the elevator’s progress, and two numbers were lit, 5 and 6. That was unusual. What did it signify? She hopped, as if to give the elevator a jump start, but nothing. The elevator didn’t budge. Was she stuck between floors?
At the word stuck, Edith felt what she called a frisson of fear, but being a grown woman, she clenched the fingernails of her left hand into her palm and cleared her throat. She realized the humming of the tiny fan set in the ceiling had stopped and in its place was more silence. “Oh dear,” said Edith in a whisper, “where am I?” She looked at her watch, (two forty-two) and then held it against her ear for the nice reassuring little ticks. Well, at least that was working. Edith pushed 6. Nothing happened. She pushed 5, then 6: ditto. She pushed them simultaneously. She spoke aloud, one hand on the collar of her coat, saying jovially, “What’s going on here?” and the sound of her own voice followed by silence was disconcerting. She wanted to call down to the doorman in case he could hear her five flights up the shaft, but what could she call him? Yoo-hoo? She pushed the red alarm button and the faintest of bells sounded weakly and then died out. Somehow this frightened Edith more than anything.
“Oh dear,” she said, and then, “oh dear, oh dear.” Edith began to feel terribly warm. “ALL RIGHT!” she roared, surprising herself with the hugeness of her own voice, then addressed herself more quietly: “Take off your coat.” Immediately, Edith felt calm. She removed her coat and hung it over the railing along the back wall of the elevator. So that’s what this is for, she thought. It had always reminded her of a ballet school barre. Edith looked at her watch again. Two forty-four? Edith felt a strong need to raise her voice again. “GOOD WORK!” she shouted. “Good work,” she repeated. “Now what? Get hold of yourself, Edith. Concentrate. Read something.” She took the list out of her pocket. “Yes,” she said, “capers,” and she reached into the paper bag. “Capers, check. Halibut? Halibut, check. Lemons. Lemons. I can always bite into a lemon if I go crazy,” she reassured herself, “and snap out of it.”
It was disagreeably warm now without the fan, and after another flurry of unanswered calls for help she began to cry. “Stop it, Edith,” she scolded herself. “Remove your outer garments.” She undid her top button (rich man) and then she undid another (poor man), letting her fingers graze the soft collar of her cream-colored blouse. It was her second nicest blouse, silk and soft to the touch like the inside of a puppy’s mouth. Edith undid a third button (beggarman), and then she buttoned them all up again. Then she unbuttoned all seven buttons (merchant) and let her blouse fall open. That was much better. She didn’t want to marry a merchant, however, that sounded so boring, so she undid the button of her skirt. Chief. She was not the sort of woman a person asked to marry, being nearly six feet tall and plain-featured although full-figured, as they say. She was wearing, of course, a very pretty slip and her bra and garter belt and girdle and stockings. She fanned herself with the index card. She took several deep breaths. “I CAN’T STAND THIS!” yelled Edith, but only twice. There was no reply of any kind. Perspiring now, Edith pulled the blouse entirely out of the waistband of her skirt and then she undid the zipper. Help,” she called, and pounded on the door but only scared herself worse. She stepped right out of her skirt. “I HAVE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE,” she said, hanging her skirt over the rail. “I MUST,” she went on, kicking her shoes off, “OR MY FISH WILL SPOIL!” The bag of fish was on the floor. She wiped her face with the hem of her slip. A voice sounded through the door. “Is anybody there?” “Oh yes,” shouted Edith eagerly. “I’m in here and the elevator is stuck, and—,” but she was interrupted by banging. “Where is that confounded elevator!” shouted an old man’s voice and Edith recognized the voice of 6B, who was hard of hearing. He must be hitting the door with his cane. The noise went on a long time, followed by silence. Edith had a terrible thought. Was she imagining this? What if she had already gone crazy? What if this were not an elevator at all but a cell in an asylum? But there were no furnishings of any kind and no window, no slot through which a prisoner could receive food or mail.
Edith began shrieking, “GET ME OUT OF HERE,” but the panic passed, like weather in Colorado, where you could see rain in the distance hanging out of clouds like a Portuguese man-of-war forty miles away. Was it Colorado? She began shouting again and banging.
“You are in no danger,” a male voice boomed from above. “Stay calm and I’ll have you out of there in no time.”
“Somebody better come soon because I’m taking all my clothes off,” cried Edith, but there was no further communication. “Are you still there?” she asked, but heard only the high-pitched whine of some kind of machine and a renewed banging somewhere else. Big tears squeezed out of Edith’s eyes and she reached down and gathered her slip to pull it over her head. There. Then she undid one front garter and one back garter. Edith had always loved the way garters worked. So efficient, and she loved bunching the stocking together behind the little doodad. She slid a stocking down one plump white leg, and then she slipped the the other stocking down. She reached behind her carefully and unfastened the hooks of her bra, feeling it loosen and letting the straps slide forward down her arms, and there were her breasts free and looking quite as they always had, large and plump and floury. She threw her bra on top of the pile of clothes on the floor. Bang bang bang went something somewhere. The air felt nice on her body. It was like skinny-dipping, which Edith had only done once many years ago because of the necessity of doing it at night and Edith not liking the look of lakes at night or the ocean either. But the water had felt startlingly good and she had never forgotten it, so refreshing, like being a fish. “Fish,” thought Edith happily, and she considered unwrapping that too but instead removed her pearls and the little garnet earrings and placed them neatly on the floor atop her clothes.
At that moment the elevator began to move. There she was, keeping herself company, when the elevator doors opened on a big man with Otis Elevator written on his pocket. He looked at Edith and did not look away. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, and his smile was so infectious that Edith had to laugh. “It was so hot, Otis,” she said, and stepped out. He caught her in his arms.
NO POCKETBOOK
ANOTHER HOT DAY and Edith is walking around with what she calls a snootful of tears. Her mother had repeated so many times in the last weeks when she was delirious, “I love you, I love you,” and Edith had looked around wondering whom her mother could possibly have meant and it has begun to dawn only recently on Edith that she’d meant Edith.
Crossing Broadway at l03rd Street she sees a girl sitting on the bench eating a lollipop. Not a girl, a young woman of perhaps eighteen? Twenty? It is so hard to tell. She has long red hair and a stretchy top on and is wearing only a pair of shorts and no shoes. No shoes! She has toenail polish on but her feet look dusty. She looks familiar. Doesn’t she live across the street? Edith has seen her grow up, hasn’t she?
Edith is shy, but impulsively she sits down next to her. The girl keeps sucking away at the lollipop, now and then brushing her cheeks free of tears. She has no shoes and no pocketbook. Unable to speak, Edith gets up and hurries into the bagel store and returns with a bagel and cup of coffee with milk and sugar to give the girl. She won’t have to say anything, she can just leave it on the bench beside her. “There’s a little something for you,” she can say. Then she will ask her if she needs anything else. It wouldn’t be so terrible. Mother left so many clothes and the girl might sleep in the spare room for a night or two. What would be the harm? At first she thinks she must have misremembered which street, was it 103rd or 104th? The girl is gone. Vanished. There is nothing left of her but the lollipop stick.
BUNNY’S SISTER
1
BUNNY STANDS BY the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It is dark and rainy. She isn’t soaked yet—she fished out her tarp just as the first big drops came down —but she’s thirsty fro
m all those cookies. Boom. Thunder. It is raining harder now. In the distance she can hear the sound of a car and as its headlights appear she steps back among the trees. From where she is standing the car looks like a station wagon. Bunny doesn’t know anybody who owns a station wagon but she thinks next time she’ll wait for one of those. It would have a family person driving it for sure. The car passes, its tires making that sad swishing on the wet road. Bunny waves in the dark.
She likes the sound of the wind. Rain patters on her head too, and clicks all over the tarp. Maybe she can spend the night in the woods somehow. She certainly isn’t about to climb into another car yet, not after Gary. God. He hadn’t done anything to her, only himself, that was lucky. He made sad noises, as if he were crying, but he wasn’t crying. He was jerking off. Then he wiped himself. She hadn’t felt sick until he’d stuffed the tissue in the ashtray. “That’s all right, you go ahead,” Gary had said while she leaned her head out the window and heaved, but he hadn’t patted her on the back. He didn’t like to touch people. He had offered to drive her to the train station, and tried to give her a twenty-dollar bill, but she had decided to take her chances in the woods. “Suit yourself,” said Gary, and had driven away. She had watched his red tail-lights disappear around the curve.
Bunny adjusts the tarp to keep the rain from running down her neck. She isn’t sure how long she’s been standing here. She isn’t even sure which side of the river she’s on because Gary kept going over all these bridges but maybe it was the same bridge. Maybe he had just driven around in circles. Maybe if she stands really still she can hear her mother calling her. Ha ha. Boom again. The wind whips the tarp around and Bunny’s feet are cold. She has her worst sneakers on, the pink ones, and no socks. She hadn’t thought about taking extra clothes. Her ankles are wet, the cuffs of her jeans. The grass is tall where she’s standing, if it is grass; maybe it could be flowers. Queen Anne’s lace. Lightning again, Bunny can see people hunched down next to trees. The hairs on the back of Bunny’s neck prickle. She searches with her right hand in the jean-jacket pocket under the tarp. Her tiny scissors are still there, her embroidery needles and thread. The point of the scissors makes a reassuring prick on her index finger, her thumb. She pricks each finger in turn, and the thumb twice for good luck. The rest of the hash brownies are in her knapsack, wrapped up in tin foil. She should never have had even one bite. That’s why she keeps thinking midgets are staring at her. God.