Now he truly is sorrowful. “Oh, Lucille. I wish you’d have called me.”
She laughs. “For what? So you could watch me make a fool of myself?”
“No. So I could ask you to take a walk to look at all the flowers instead of trying to kill yourself.”
She nods, then begins to rock slowly in her chair. For a long time, neither she nor Arthur speaks. Their chairs do the talking for them. Then Lucille says, “It’s so embarrassing to be useless.”
“Why, you’re not useless!” Arthur says.
“Yes I am.”
“You’re just going through a hard time!”
“Yes, I am, but also I am useless. I do nothing. I realized this was happening some time ago, everything falling off, but I made do. I had church. I read books, and the paper. I had my garden. But then when Frank came into my life, well, it was like plugging in the Christmas tree. And then…lights off! All the lights are off now. And I really don’t want to live anymore, Arthur. What is left for me now? I am useless. And so are you!”
Arthur straightens in his chair, indignant. “I’m not useless!”
“You are, too, all you do is go and visit your wife at the graveyard every single day! That’s all you do!”
“Well. First of all, I don’t think it’s useless to visit Nola. It is my great pleasure and honor to go to the resting place of the finest woman I ever knew and think about the boundless glory of my life with her.”
“Okay, I’m sorry I said that. I know how you feel about Nola. I know how much it means to you to go and visit her.”
“No you don’t,” Arthur says. “Nobody knows how much it means to me, except maybe her. And: apart from that, I am not useless.”
“But what do you do? You don’t even go to church! You take care of your roses and that’s it!”
Arthur rocks for a while. Lucille’s chair has gone still, but Arthur rocks for a while.
“Let me ask you something,” he says, finally.
“What.”
“Did you ever hear anyone say they wanted to be a writer?”
“Yes. I’ve heard lots of people say that.”
“Everybody wants to be a writer,” Arthur says.
“Seems like.”
He stops his rocking to look over at her. “But what we need are readers. Right? Where would writers be without readers? Who are they going to write for? And actors, what are they without an audience? Actors, painters, dancers, comedians, even just ordinary people doing ordinary things, what are they without an audience of some sort?
“See, that’s what I do. I am the audience. I am the witness. I am the great appreciator, that’s what I do and that’s all I want to do. I worked for a lot of years. I did a lot of things for a lot of years. Now, well, here I am in the rocking chair, and I don’t mind it, Lucille. I don’t feel useless. I feel lucky.”
She says nothing.
“Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, but I want to do something!” She’s yelling now. And so he yells back, “Well, then, do it! For cripes’ sake! Volunteer!”
She pushes her glasses up on her face, crosses her arms. “For your information, I looked into that. This was before Frank. This was when you were acting like you were a saint to sit with me for five minutes and I was dying of loneliness. Well, I decided to do something about my life. I went to the library to have them help me look for volunteer opportunities. And I’m sorry, but there was not one thing I was interested in. Hauling people to chemotherapy appointments. No. Cleaning up poop at the animal shelter. No. Teaching English, no, I just don’t feel qualified for that. Serving meals to the homeless, I can’t. I can’t!”
“Why can’t you serve meals to the homeless?” Arthur asks.
“Because I can’t be on my feet that long!”
“Oh.” He looks at her feet. “Do you have sneakers? They make them with Velcro straps, real easy to get on and off.”
“Yes, I have sneakers! I take a ten-minute power walk every morning! Or I used to.”
“Why don’t you anymore?”
“I…” She shakes her head and sighs. “Because I am no longer interested in one single thing.”
Arthur nods. Then he says, “I know this one gal, she volunteers at the hospital, answering phones at the information desk.”
“Well, I can’t learn all that. All that information.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m too old, Arthur! You know, it has been shown that it’s harder to learn when you get older. Don’t think that just because you can do a Sudoku puzzle you’re in the pink! And anyway, that job would make me nervous. I’m nervous enough as it is. I’ve always been a nervous person, I just can’t help it. Imagine, all those people crowding around the desk, asking this and that, talking over each other, coming back to complain because you gave them the wrong directions!”
“What about baking? You wouldn’t have to learn anything new then, you know it all already.”
She says nothing.
“Did you ever think about teaching baking, Lucille? Nobody bakes like you!”
“Well, I know that, but where am I going to teach baking? There was no listing to teach baking on that volunteer list.”
“So what’s stopping you from putting yourself on the list? ‘Cookie baking by Lucille’?”
“I can bake far more than cookies, Arthur.”
“So volunteer to teach all you know!”
Silence.
Then, “I don’t know. Maybe I could. If I could teach right in my own house. I’m not driving anywhere.”
“That’s a great idea.”
From the bushes over by his house, Arthur hears a loud meow. He jumps up. “I’ve gotta go, Lucille. Gotta get the cat in.”
As he walks by her, she takes his hand and holds it. “Thank you,” she says.
“That’s all right. You’ll be all right. You know what? Come over for lunch tomorrow, why don’t you? That girl will be there. Maddy is her name. We’ll have lunch, she’s coming at noon. By the way, she’s pregnant.” He says this last part low.
“She’s what?”
“Pregnant!”
“You’re going to have a baby in your house?”
“I don’t know. I guess. When she has it.”
“Oh, my goodness.”
“What, Lucille? You don’t like babies?”
“Yes, I like babies! And I know a lot about them that I learned and never got to use! I am practically Dr. Spock!”
“Well, you’ll be pretty useful then, won’t you? Good night, Lucille.”
He crosses over to his house and yells, “Gordon!”
The cat walks in blithe as can be. Arthur’s stomach feels funny. He thinks he’d better take some bicarb and water.
After he drinks it in the kitchen, he takes a look over at Lucille’s kitchen. She’s sitting at the table in her pretty dress, with her wig off.
—
Lucille sits at the kitchen table, tapping a pencil against a blank recipe card on which she was going to make a list of pros and cons. But she wonders if she should just go ahead and do what Arthur suggested. There are so many recipes she could share. Though not the orange blossom cookie one. Or the lavender shortbread. No. Never. And she’d hate to give out the lemon drop cheesecake recipe, then everyone will have it. Then again, why not? She can teach so many people so many things! They will ask questions. They will ask for her approval. She will be a teacher again, but to adults this time, like a professor. She will be a source of inspiration to so many people whose idea of good cake is Duncan Hines, for heaven’s sake. She will teach them to make things they’ve never heard of that they’ll love. They’ll love them!
She looks at the dying philodendron in the corner of the kitchen. She gets a glass of water and carefully pours some in the dirt. A plant in the kitchen is cheerful. It would be a shame to let it go. She will not let it go.
She settles herself back in her chair. Well. Here is the situation. She is ingloriously, ind
ubitably here. Might as well be useful.
Frank, saying, Who cares what happens before we’re born and after we die? The question is, what do we do in the meantime?
Pistachio party cake, she writes on the card. That will be the first one she teaches, because it’s so easy. She’ll start them off with ingredients they’re familiar with. Already, she knows what she’ll wear that day: her pistachio-colored blouse. Nearly the same color as the cake. And her first question: “Who here has never sifted flour?” A few hands, a few shameful looks. “Now, don’t feel bad, this is why I’m here. I’m going to pass around this sifter, it’s an oldie but goodie. Try it out. You’ll get the hang of it right away.”
Pinwheels. Maple cake with maple syrup frosting. Cocoa marshmallow cake. Lemon snaps. Jelly roll. Pudding cake. Apricot bars. Marigold cake, oh, that’s a light one, you just feel like it will float right off the fork.
In fact, she’ll make one tomorrow and bring it over for their lunch! She gets up to go to bed, and sees all the dishes in the sink. Lord! Well, she’s still here. She’ll get to them in the morning.
—
Maddy drops her duffel bag in the middle of the bedroom. Arthur showed her up there, then asked if she’d like to be alone to settle in. “Maybe for just a few minutes,” she told him. Yes. She wants to feel this place out.
She likes the dark color of her solid wooden bedroom door, and she loves the glass doorknob. The walls are indeed painted a pale yellow color that looks like a wash of sun. There are white see-through curtains, but window shades, too, a bit yellowed with age, but when she tests them they work perfectly fine. There’s a single bed against the wall, a white flowered chenille bedspread over it. Only one pillow, but she’ll get more. She sits at the edge of the bed, bounces up and down to test the firmness. It’s a bit soft, which she actually likes a lot.
There’s a round rag rug on the floor, done in colors of pink and yellow and blue. In the corner is a little upholstered chair, pink velvet. Worn, but very appealing. Next to it is a lamp from around 1812, from the looks of it. Maddy tries the switch. It works. She sits in the chair and discovers that it rocks. Perfect.
A wooden desk is against another wall, a kind of clunky old thing, but with deep drawers. Maddy goes to sit in the desk chair and opens a drawer. There’s a receipt in there: Arthur bought it yesterday from the Goodwill. Sixty dollars for both the desk and chair. She’ll pay him back out of her first paycheck.
Next to the desk is a little white bookcase, empty now; she guesses Arthur removed everything so she could fill it with whatever she wants. She has only a few books: a couple of slim volumes of poetry, Jane Hirshfield and Barbara Crooker, which Mr. Lyons gave her; and a great big book of Walker Evans’s photography, American Photographs, which she took with her when she left home. It was a gift from her father one Christmas; Maddy had begged and begged for it after she had seen it in the library. It was the only thing she wanted.
She looks at the inscription inside the Evans book: For Maddy, Merry Christmas from your father. It is only now that she realizes how odd it is that he didn’t say Love. It’s something she and her counselor talk about, how broken her dad is. And how the onus is on him to get fixed.
She’ll get more books. They’re really cheap at yard sales, they practically pay you to take them. She’ll get more books, she’ll take care of her baby, and she’ll be the best student that art college has ever seen, they will never regret having given her a scholarship. She never knew such a school existed. One hundred and eleven miles away. She has always said that eleven is her lucky number.
Also, she will be the best housekeeper Arthur has ever seen. She actually looked up housekeeping tips online, including how to iron.
Online!
Maddy calls down to the kitchen, where Arthur is preparing lunch. Chili dogs, they’re having. He’s down there chopping up onions, she can smell them.
“Arthur!” she calls.
He appears at the bottom of the steps, a dishtowel tucked into his pants, a little paring knife in his hand. “Yes?”
“Are you online?”
He cups his hand around his ear. “Say again?”
“Are you online?”
“Yes, I have a clothesline. Right out back. Washer and dryer are in the basement, by the way.”
“No, are you online?”
He frowns. “Am I fine? Is that what you’re asking?”
She comes halfway down the stairs and says, “Arthur, do you have a computer?”
“Oh. No.”
“Okay. I can use one at the library.”
“Well, I could get a computer.”
He’d never use it, and she’ll be gone soon. “If I decide I need one here, I’ll pay for it out of my salary,” she tells him.
Her salary. Maddy relishes the negotiation they had:
MADDY: Room and board is all I need.
ARTHUR: Absolutely not. I’m going to pay you. How’s fifty dollars a day?
MADDY: Fifty dollars a day! That’s fifteen hundred dollars a month!
ARTHUR: Oh. Is it?
MADDY: Yes!
ARTHUR: (worried-looking) Sixty dollars a day?
MADDY: Truluv. If you pay me sixty dollars a month it will be fine. It will be more than enough. There’s that scholarship, remember?
ARTHUR: Four hundred dollars a month, and that’s my last offer.
“The chili smells good,” Maddy says.
“Hormel.”
“There you go.”
“Are you almost ready to eat?” he asks.
“Sure. And remember: from now on, I cook.”
Arthur smiles.
The doorbell rings and he says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, I invited my neighbor Lucille over for lunch. She’s bringing dessert. She’s quite the baker.”
“Yes, you gave me some of her orange blossom cookies.”
“Oh. That’s right. I remember.”
Maddy thinks he does not, but so what.
She goes back to her room and hangs up her few clothes in the closet. Way in the back is something…Oh. A crib. A really old, folded-up crib, with a lamb resting on pink and blue clouds painted on the headboard. So this would have been the baby’s room. She touches the crib gently, then rests her empty duffel in front of it.
Maddy takes the beat-up photo of her mother from her purse and props it up on the wall behind her desk, then goes downstairs.
Before they are even introduced, Lucille says, “Well, look at you! Talk about the glow of pregnancy!”
So Lucille knows. It’s a relief, in a way. “I’m Maddy Harris,” she says, and offers her hand. Lucille shakes it with a vigor Maddy would not have predicted.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Lucille says breathlessly. “I’m Lucille Howard, your next-door neighbor.” She points to her house. “That one. Right there.”
“Yes, Arthur has told me about you.”
Lucille looks quickly over at Arthur.
“He told me you’re a really good baker. I had some of your orange blossom cookies, and they were amazing.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you. But wait till you taste that!” She points to a cake in the center of the table, frosted a vibrant orange color, frosting flowers ringing the edges. Marigolds, Maddy thinks they’re supposed to be.
“Let’s eat before anything gets cold,” Lucille says. And then, spying the water that Arthur has set out for all of them, she turns to him and says, “Don’t you have milk? She needs milk. She’s carrying a child. She needs calcium! The little bones!”
Arthur looks a bit flustered. “Well, let me look.”
He starts to get up, and Maddy puts her hand over Arthur’s. “It’s okay. I’ll drink water for now. I like water with chili dogs.”
“Well, exactly,” Arthur says. “And beer.”
“She can’t have beer!” Lucille practically screeches, and Maddy says, “I know that, Lucille.”
Old bat. And yet how wonderful to be paid attention to. How wonderful to be
cared for, even if it’s by a couple of goofy old people. She adores Arthur. Arthur and his things, like Mr. and Mrs. Hamburger. Who are in her backpack. Later tonight, she’ll confess. Here’s what she knows: he’ll forgive her.
—
Lucille lowers the shade in her bedroom and flops down on the bed. Oh, the sheets smell sweet. Maddy washed the sheets and ironed the pillowcases, now where are you ever going to find someone to do that.
She also took out all the trash and dusted and vacuumed and swept like Cinderella. She did all the dirty dishes and wiped them and put them away. She watered the garden and the houseplants. She stacked up all the mail into a neat little pile. She threw things out of the refrigerator and wiped down the shelves. She was supposed to clean Arthur’s place, but Arthur said ‘Ladies first,’ and so there you are, Lucille is going to bed knowing that in the morning she will come down into the kitchen, where everything is back to normal, only better. Shining! Maddy put a bouquet of tulips on her dining room table, and she even put one in the bathroom in a little aspirin bottle. Lucille would rather not see that aspirin bottle. But the tulip almost makes her forget why the bottle is empty.
She’s such a delicate thing, Maddy. She’s tall, but slight. She’s like a little bird, and she arouses Lucille’s protective instincts. Such a wonderful girl, if she’d just take that thing out of her nose. Lucille didn’t see any tattoos, but she understands that a lot of kids put them in nasty places: she supposes the girl could have one, all right.
But she is awfully pretty. Smart, courteous, quick to laugh, and observant, truly observant. And the kind who can anticipate things you might need. She doesn’t talk much to Lucille, most of her remarks are directed at Arthur. But she can clean.
And she loved Lucille’s cake. She practically fainted after she tasted it. “Ohhhhhhhh,” she said after the first bite, her eyes closed, and it was one of those sounds like she was in pain, but she wasn’t in pain, she was in ecstasy. Well, the cake is special. Even for Lucille. “How did you make this?” Maddy asked, and Lucille did her usual and waved her hand and said it was nothing. Well, it was not nothing! Twice-sifted flour, whole nutmeg grated on that irritating little grater that almost always scrapes her knuckles. You think it’s easy making frosting marigolds? One compromise is that the frosting was tinted by food coloring (organic) and not calendulin, which of course is what gives marigolds their astonishing color. But she didn’t have any marigolds. And anyway, you have to watch what you eat when you’re carrying a baby. A pregnant woman she knows from church told Lucille the only thing hard about being pregnant was that she couldn’t eat sushi. Hard? Lucille thought. She herself would be dancing in the streets if she were told she must not eat sushi.