Threes

102° in the shade, and what could possibly be so important that we sit out here in the sun waiting for some damn train - pardon my French. And, a girdle? You have got to be kidding, and you are lucky I even put on these stockings, rolled down below my knees. What is the point of that, anyway. Not even a damn water fountain - pardon my French. Naturally, Isobel has on her girdle, but she still has a man at home, God help her. I buried Frank on a Saturday, rest his soul, and by Thursday that ring was in the jewelry box and the girdles were in the garbage. If it's not gold to choke the life outta you, it's Lycra. I wish I had a beer.

Dear sweet Lord, it is hot! Esther doesn't give a fig about how she looks, but I'd take a backside full of lumps if I could slip out of this girdle. Henry would go apoplectic if I ever left the house like that. It's probably what killed Frank. Oh, I don't mean that. Esther's my best friend, but she's too set in her widow's ways to ever find a man again. Will that train ever get here? Darlene getting married in velvet - land's sake. But who expected a September like this? I can't believe I walked out of the house in white shoes. I guess my brain don't believe it's September neither, and my feet don't care. I wish I had a Coke.

My word. these gals sure look hot. Why don't Esther just roll them stocking right on off? What is the point of that, anyhow? Sitting over there, looking like she'd bite you soon as look at you. Just the heat, I guess. Land! It sure is hot.

I guess I done alright by Isobel. Henry's a good man. Not one for having a good time much, but that suits Isobel just fine. I don't imagine she's had a good time since she accidentally had fun at the church picnic. Which shows you you shouldn't drink beer in public no matter how hot the day.

Quit checking your watch, Isobel. That train is not going to roll any quicker if you look at the time. What's your goddam hurry to get to another wedding? Another wedding for Darlene, of all things. One man apiece is more than enough without sniffing around for extras. I wish I had my Joe.

Of Her Own

Her mother was scandalized by her Nevada divorce, nevermind that it was her second. She thought she was keeping it secret pretty well, but damn Ed and his big mouth. Selfish. And that had been the whole problem. That had been part of the problem. He was selfish. She was selfish.

The things he wanted were things he could only get from her: a clean house, children, holiday dinners. The things she wanted she could only get for herself. The divorce wrung her out, and so she had remained for nearly a year. Juiceless, balled up and paper-dry.

The words, at first, were tightly wadded things. Dense, clotted bits of her soul that she seemed to hack off with her pen. You can still read them somewhere, in one of those old notebooks. She would be mortified to think of someone reading them now; in fact, you may feel a little dirty as you open the pages. Like reading your mother's high school diary. So, go read them or don't. I can only tell you so much.

Her first marriage had been almost too brief to count as a marriage, but too long to be annulled. After two weeks she sat across from him at the breakfast table and wondered, "Is this it?"

The words began - so slowly! - to unclench inside her. They weren't easy words. Some of them were ugly, and some days they made her ill. That's when you or I would have laid down the pen, but she couldn't. Not yet. It’s no wonder she never wrote when she was with Ed. He reminded her of her bedtime each night and reminded her he was hungry. He kept such regular hours. He had a tidy mind. And so, as he breathed, he wrote. Pages flew from his hand as sandwiches and coffee appeared at his side and empty plates and cups vanished.

One morning she mentioned her own office. Ed laughed. She knew which room it should be, and she pressed him. It isn't that he forbade it; that would have been absurd. It's just that that room was to be a nursery soon and what's wrong with writing in the kitchen? The table is spacious, and may we please discuss this after lunch?

She never wrote like he did, like breathing or daydreaming. For her it was laboring (she imagined) to deliver a child that never quite got born. When she read the words back -- those red, angry, wailing thoughts -- she was disgusted, but she didn't stop.

Her biographers say her work came from her pain. From what I could see, it was entirely the other way around.

Silk Noir

It's a tough business. She was sweet - that's the thing. She was a picture that didn't need a caption. I fell for her like everyone else. Eyes as black as the coffee I drink to do my work and hers, too. Eyes like the chocolate I slide onto her desk before she gets in around noon. My desk. I don't mind so much.

She wears dresses that could stop your heart. Those dresses pull the clients in by the rings in their noses. Even that tough old dame who wouldn't give us the time of day. Go figure. It didn't matter. We were stuck to her like flies to the tape.

See, she gets the clients, but we're the grunts. Didn't start out like that. I was the Big Dog before she came. Curves like a mile of Tennessee road. Fellas slipped me chocolates on those days. That was all before her. Now she runs the show. Owns us all, heart and soul.

Like I said, I was Top Cat. They called me The Broad Who Can, and it ain't 'cause my can is broad. We had a spot, needed an agent. I put an ad in the Gazette: Wanted: Cream of the crop Commission only Bonus if bringing clients DEarborn 6-1234 She shows up - no call. Pretty brassy. In my doorway, but giving Johnny and Theo that smile like a high beam. Those headlights weren't lost on me, either.

"Thanks, boys. I'm sure this dame can hold herself up now. Can't you, honey?"

"I can do better than that." She turned that smile like a lighthouse beacon on me.

Easy does it I thought. You've made a fool of yourself before over a pretty face and a killer figure. This little number is just like all the rest.

"I asked for the best, Missy. Whatcha got?"

"I bring five clients. They jump when I jump."

"Where're you jumping from?"

"Best you don't know, due respect." She's a tough nut. "It might create an "ethical dilemma" for you. Know what I mean?"

One cool little cucumber, but I was feeling hot under the collar. If I had been wearing a collar. Her eyes plunged like my neckline, danced around my collarbones, then jumped back into her head and met my gaze. This lady was reading me like a book, like a box of corn flakes. She was reading me like a billboard. I didn't like that one bit. I liked it a little bit. She was dangerous. A loose cannon. A joker in the deck.

Those five clients made me tingle, too. This agency needed clients, and times were hard. I had to think about the agency.

"Come in tomorrow. Eddie'll find you a desk and you can get started."

"I can start Monday, " she says. Cool little number. I could see I was gonna have to remind her who was queen bee around here. I'd shown those fellas, and she was no different. She was a little different. But, I'm a professional. The agency comes before my private life, and that's just that. Private.

I came around my desk. In these heels, I'm as tall as the men, and I've gotta be. Keep their respect. I shrugged. "We need someone tomorrow. It's you or it's someone else. Your call."

Her eyes never left mine. They went all sad and soft, just like I was going all soft in the head. "This is the best shop in town. I'd kill to work for you! I just can't start 'till Monday. It's a promise I made, you know?"

She made for her purse like she was going for a tissue. Her hand brushed my leg. I told you. She read me like a road map. She read me like a street sign. "Fine," I told her, kicking myself. "Nine a.m. sharp."

She flashed that smile like a miner's lamp. "You won't be sorry," she said, all cool again just like that. Oh yes I will be, I thought. Just not on Monday.

That was fourteen months ago, that Tuesday. I know how she likes her coffee. When I come in to take dictation - just a favor I do her - she shares her chocolates. She doesn't know I brought them. She might know. We all do it. I've been growing my hair since February. She likes that. She gives me fashion tips, too. Says her clients like to see a secretary looking like a dish. "You're keepin' 'em coming back." She winked at me. She slid my dress over my knees, like the girls on Randolph wear. Almost like that. "Like this." She didn't move her hands. "Those gams are killer." And turned on that smile like an emergency flare.

Every Day is Ladies' Day

You had to have someone like Lailey in a beauty parlor. Curled, plucked, painted and rouged, the blue velvet dress she wore every Tuesday just set off her Forever Amber eyes. I saw a cat with eyes that color once, but never a stand-up-on-two-feet woman.

Her apartment was so splendid. She invited me up one Tuesday after her manicure - she lived two buildings over, just over the Set-A-Spell Diner - and I just stopped right then trying to be sophisticated and elegant. Her curtains were red velvet like the rope outside the ticket window at the Bijou. Like the curtains in a bordello, Frannie would say, but she has a mouth on her and no client of hers has ever invited her to tea. Frannie likes to say Hair today, gone tomorrow! to the old ladies under the dryers when they can't hear. She has another irritating mannerism, but it's not a good one to talk about in polite society.

"... wasting time on gin rummy" was all I caught from what she was saying and I figured I ought to say something about that, but Mama spends a lot of time on gin rummy herself, especially on Saturday night when Miss Shellynn and Miss Rachel come over, Miss Rachel always bringing a half-filled paper bag holding yesterday's crullers. Mama sees those crullers coming and says under her breath I guess our troubles are over, but she's been saying it so long she doesn't make herself laugh anymore. Sometimes it tickles me, though, so I guess I'm keeping it going.

That apartment was like sugar on pie. It had kind of a funny smell, like maybe the litter pan was just one day past due, but I didn't care one whit. She turned on a lamp next to her fancy sofa, and it gave off a beautiful pink glow. She had draped a scarf over it, and I was afraid it might catch fire, but that's none of my business and she's twice my age so she's been turning on lights longer than I have and knows a thing or two about not catching things on fire.

"Have a seat, dear. This is normally my afternoon for whist, but today I just can't face the familiar phobias of my three dearest friends." I nodded like I could just imagine how trying that might be for her. "Bernice has a fit until I turn off this lamp. She is sure I'm going to burn us all up as we're bidding." I nodded again and made a little face to show I couldn't imagine worrying about such a thing.

"Tell me something interesting about yourself, dear," and I blurted out the first thing I thought which was that next Tuesday is my birthday. "Will you be taking the day off?" she asked me, but that was something I hadn't thought of before. I started thinking how Clarice and Pug might not care much if I took off, especially if the parlor isn't so booked up, or else maybe I could call in sick Tuesday morning. I could call first thing while my throat is still froggy and I sound all croupy, but then I remembered that they're both invited to my party that night and would see how I'm not so sick after all. I should invite Lailey! It would be Tuesday, so she'd be wearing this same dress but she'd be sitting in our kitchen with the chipped white sink and the light over the table with the string instead of her beautiful pink-light lamp ... and then I remembered that she had asked me a question and I just said "No Ma'am." And I decided Lailey should never, ever be sitting at Mama's old Formica kitchen table, cake or no cake, gin rummy or whist.

"You know what I like about Beulah's salon, Dipsy?" I shook my head. "Every day is ladies' day!" and she laughed a tiny laugh like she hadn't thought it was all that funny, but she didn't want to hurt her own feelings. I tried laughing that same polite way, but I accidentally snorted the way I do when Frannie says something naughty in fake French while she's sweeping up hair. Lailey didn't seem to notice, but I wanted to fall into the floor and die, or maybe just die and let someone else worry about what to do with my dead body.

I jumped up like I had springs on my behind and said "I got a manicure in five minutes, Miss Lailey. Thank you so much for inviting me to your beautiful lamp ... " and then I flew out her door and back to Beulah's. Nope. I was not going to invite Lailey to my house, not next Tuesday or in this natural lifetime.

LaFonda Fireberry

She was the queen of the show, that La Fonda Fireberry. I never even liked drag shows, but Maria told me I was being a drag, so I paid my money and sulked. I pouted through Hedda Lettuce, wasting my salad days, and idly picked my teeth through Ginger Vitis' act.

Then, La Fonda took the stage. Curves that shouted SLOW DOWN: CAMP AHEAD! Curls the color of the sun in my Tequila Sunrise. I raised my glass to her. She sashayed her way over and sang just to me, and when I pulled that portrait of Jackson out of my pocket, she let me slip it right down the front of her dress.

These days I'm not so big on reality. La Fonda ruined me for all women. She left a fireberry-red nylon hair on my sweater, and a size 15 stiletto through my heart.

Broken

It's too much, she thought, to think about tonight. Tonight I'll drink tea and meditate and go to bed. After all, tomorrow is another day.

She rummaged through the boxes for a teapot and settled for the ancient Lo-Heat stainless steel pan her grandfather had bought sixty years ago. It hadn't occurred to her before to wonder why Papa Joe had bought such fancy cookware. Nana had been dead thirty years - after that, the girls had done all the cooking. The story went that Papa would tease the girls by pretending not to know who had cooked that night. "I can always tell Norma's biscuits - dry as dirt!" Hazel and Norma both got themselves into a snit over stuff like that. Mary Anne was too little and didn't have to cook anyway.

It really was all too much to think about, but Orla thought about it anyway. She could never keep all this stuff. Matt would be patient for a few days, but after that would begin to fidget and clear his throat a lot, like he was starting to speak but had thought better of it. After a week of that, he wouldn't be thinking better of it anymore and that's when the fights would start. Orla wasn't ready to fight and didn't expect to be ready in two weeks.

Patrick didn't care about these things. Not really. He had heard the stories and had looked at the pictures. Maybe the three-dimensional glass and porcelain and steel would capture his heart and close the connection. She knew she was kidding herself. This stuff was not the reality, and no matter how many stories she told, she could never make these things real. What she needed was Smell-o-vision. Papa's house had always smelled vaguely like meat, which was probably the bacon grease in the green beans or the pork knuckles in the collards. Orla had tried cooking like that for Matt when they had been newly married, back when his patience was still thick and she was relaxed in her life. He had eaten it without saying much, refusing seconds. Before long he started mentioning saturated fat and cholesterol when they weren't at the table. He bought her a heavy non-stick pan and her mama's cast iron pots disappeared. She just realized that. When had she last seen them? No, really, it is too much to think about tonight.

Orla switched off the gas and looked around for a cup. Matt would have reminded her that that's what you do while the water is heating instead of staring out into the blackness just beyond the window. She opened the thick pecan cupboard door to the left of the sink, but it was an unproductive reflex because the cups were in a box in the living room. She padded across the old familiar planks to find what she needed. The first she came to was a white china cup that had been repaired at least once. Tonight it was missing just one triangular piece from the rim. Matt would have tossed it in one expert arc into the metal trash can in the corner. Something that broken isn't worth keeping. She pulled it out of the box and went back to the kitchen.

Orla stared at the cup then around the big kitchen. The light over the stove was on, but she had left off the bright overhead light with the long string. She reached into her purse for the phone and hit "Home."

Matt? I'm going to need to stay longer than I thought. There's too much. No, no need. Stay there.

Something that broken isn't worth keeping.

Wanted.

I've wanted to tell you this for the longest time, but I never had a greeting card small enough.

A Borrower and a Lender Be.

My mother hid in barrels and read all day. She took apples in with her. I think my Grandma Vera practiced relaxed parenting. I loved to read just as much, but never had a barrel and never wanted one. I preferred caramel cubes to apples, but I was willing to mix it up. Gnawed cores or cellophane wrappers - reading always leaves a tell-tale sign.

I went to the library this week, kickin' it old-school. I slid up and down the aisles, judging books by their covers, not even knowing how many stars Amazon readers had given them. When I met Annie she read a lot, and every book was new off the bookstore shelves. That's its own thrill, and I feel it, too, but when I asked her about her library card I saw one, two, three blinks of incomprehension before we were on the same page and could turn it. I've lured her to the Frugal Side.

It has always seemed that I should have to work to borrow a book. Maybe sweat into the oak card catalog drawer for a while. Run my fingers over the softened cardboard file cards with one hole at the bottom as a security measure. A brazen reader, indeed, who would rip the card from its steel rod. Then the scrap of paper, a stubby pencil and the hunt was on. I got dizzy the first time I realized I could ask for a book online and it would come right to my library. Now I'm waiting for the day it comes to my mailbox. But, it's snowy today - could you walk it to my door? Just leave it wrapped outside - I'm in my bathrobe.

Beware of This and That

This is a waste of time, Innocence thought, and pitched the urn, the bicycle, and herself cheerfully into the abyss. Only her mother and the tabloids noticed.




Cecily's grandmother told her every morning to Beware of This and That, and Cecily had almost stopped noticing. Her mother often said things like "Watch out for boys with shiny shoes, " and "Look both ways seven times before crossing the street" and "Don't marry a man who smiles a lot," which were tiresome to hear while also eating a bowl of lumpy oatmeal without sugar because Cecily's mother also said "Eating sugar will make your children simple." But these warnings at least gave Cecily something to watch for. She could always cross the road, dizzy but unharmed, should a smiling man with patent leather shoes approach her, but how in the world could she be expected to Beware of This and That?

Cecily's grandmother thought Cecily's mother was dull-witted. Cecily wondered if sugar was to blame. Cecily's mother did lack imagination, she thought, but probably just didn't want her daughter to slip into the Abyss of Indiscretion, as she herself had done when a smiling man with shiny shoes hit her with his horse. Cecily's grandmother had been rather relieved at the time, having suffered great pangs of guilt for naming her daughter Innocence. Unluckily, Innocence had rummaged around in the Abyss, found the cracked Urn of her Reputation, and the crumpled frame of her Bicycle of Propriety and had resumed her ride with squeaky fervor. Only this time it was worse, because now she was wearing the Galoshes of Remorse. Cecily's grandmother knew the dangers of too many warnings.

Donald Imagined Things: a Gorey story

No matter where he went, Donald imagined things. Donald was not delusional, nor ill, nor even particularly special in any way. He possessed a healthy imagination and knew when he was using it. But, sometimes - just sometimes - he wished he wouldn't use it so much.

Donald's imagination frightened him a little, because he couldn't always turn it off once he had turned it on, and now and then he didn't care for the way things went. Tthis time, for example. In the daylight it wouldn't have mattered so much, but after everyone else was asleep it could be terrifying to try to get into his own bed when a small boy already seemed to be there.

Outfit to be Tied.

My mother has a very tidy mind. I don't mean to say that she is a clear thinker, or a deep one. I mean that it is swept clear of distracting details, bits of ideas, or fragments of plans. She thinks in themes, in motifs, and in monochrome.

When I was a child, she never bought me clothes, she bought me outfits. Before I was old enough to protest, my outfits matched not just themselves, but hers. In a photograph I unearthed this week, I am fishing with my father while I am wearing a dress. With a fish appliqued to its front. Because she stayed behind at home, I don't for one moment believe she was wearing a fish dress herself. My mother believed in costuming.

In 1975 she bought beautiful lacquered Korean furniture from a young military wife who was tired of reminders of her old life and wanted new American furniture. So, my mother acquired enough furniture to fill our house. The new shiny black hutch held colorful bridal dolls from Seoul. Our intricately-inlaid dining table stood thirteen inches high, and we sat on satin pillows to eat. She did her makeup at an extravagantly lovely vanity piece that also needed a pillow on the floor.

I didn't mind this; I agreed it was exquisite. Then the accessorizing began. The carpets needed to be red or black. Throw pillows, blankets, plates, cookware - all had to pass chromatic muster. Because she knew of no Korean cat breeds, she brought in the meanest Siamese she could find, and hoped the thematic disruption wouldn't be noticeable. It's unclear how the Pomeranians and I escaped the western purge.

Once, she decided to decorate her bedroom in orange, and so any item - useful or not - was welcome as long as it was the right shade. The right shade was orange. Look at the fruit. Books, lamps, curtains, rugs, picture frames, perfume bottles, knick-knacks of any kind. A gift needn't be useful or fun in any way, it needed only to be orange. A still-life for her dresser? Oranges are the only fruit.

Photographic evidence suggests I carried on the tradition into my first marriage. My clothing continued to be outfits. Skirts in suits, trousers in pantsuits. My kitchen was done in strawberries. A well-meaning friend gave me an apple cookie jar - a tragic misinterpretation of the theme - and I proudly displayed it on my counter until she left.

Today, the pendulum has swung to the edge of its arc. I struggle to match shirts and pants in cases of dire necessity (weddings, funerals, job interviews). They don't pass as outfits, but, I hope, as tastefully coordinated separates, thrown together in an appealing, devil-may-care recklessness. Roxanne is always thinking about more important things than her clothing. Go on - ask her about Spinoza's God!

Neither can I be accused of having anything like a tidy mind. I'm no clearer a thinker than my mother, but I do harbor mental shelves full of bits, fragments and distracting details. I keep them around in case I can make them into an outfit.

Watkins Glen marina

Watkins Glen marina, originally uploaded by ¡Vizcacha!.

Slogging around like a tourist, wearing clothes to match.