All Alone in the Universe (11 page)

twelve

 

 

Thanks giving Monday

 

“T
HE THING IS,
I
LIKED
M
ARIE,”
I
SAID TO
P
ATTY.
W
E WERE WALK
ing down Pearl Avenue on Thanksgiving Monday, the first day of deer hunting. There was no school. We were going to Jim‧s Bargain Store for red thread, weather stripping, and green burlap. “So why did I, like, not be her friend? More than I did, I mean.”

Patty thought it over. “Well, you‧re pretty different from each other,” she said.

“Yeah, but can we be friends only with people who are just the same as us?” I asked. “Wouldn‧t that be sort of boring?”

“I don‧t think you have to be just the same,” she said. “But there has to be something that‧s alike. Otherwise what do you do together? What do you talk about?”

We stopped to look at the revolving silver Christmas tree in the window of Tony Williams Shoes. Children‧s socks and slippers were hung on it like ornaments. The window on the other side had a New Year‧s Eve theme: a champagne bottle, confetti, and high-heeled patent leather shoes with buckles or ribbon roses or rhinestones that could be snapped on in front depending on the occasion or your mood.

 

Patty said, “I guess with anybody, there would be some things that are in common, just because you‧re both human beings. I mean, everyone has to eat and sleep. And breathe. Although breathing isn‧t something you usually talk about, unless for some reason somebody, like,
stops
breathing.”

It was an interesting conversation, and it might have gone on for a lot longer, if I hadn‧t looked up just as we turned onto Pittsfield Street.

“That‧s George!” I said under my breath.

“What?” said Patty.

“That guy getting out of the car up there,” I said, “I know him.”

George circled to the passenger side and opened the door.

“And that‧s Mrs. Brown,” I said as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, resplendent in sky blue ski pants and a white ski parka with a fur-lined hood. The ski parka had tags hanging from the zipper; leave it to people in Deer Church to know where to find snow while the rest of us sputtered along in the drab gray nothing that hovers between autumn and real winter. George was wearing a car coat and a brown plaid scarf. He looked great, too, just because he was George.

“Who are they?” asked Patty.

“It‧s a long story,” I said. “I‧ll tell you later.”

Maybe later I could also explain why happiness was spurting up inside me at the sight of them.

“George!” I called out. “Mrs. Brown!”

They turned, and there was that moment that happens before someone recognizes you. It can happen with your own family, if you catch them off guard. I helped them out.

“I‧m Debbie,” I said. “I came to your garden last summer—”

“Of course!” said Mrs. Brown. “And we‧ve been waiting for you to come back ever since.”

“I knew I had connections in this town,” said George.

“What are you doing in Seldem?” I asked.

“Pie,” said Mrs. Brown. “Pie brings us here. George was kind enough to help me out with a big chore over in Plum Borough, and coming back, we decided the only way to keep up our strength and salvage the afternoon was to have some coffee and maybe a little dessert.”

I noticed that we were all standing next to the Idle Hour Restaurant “They do have really good pie here,” I said.

George spoke to Patty. “I don‧t believe we‧ve met,” he said, “unless you have changed markedly.”

She laughed. “I‧m Patty,” she said. “Patty Tsimmicz.”

“Oops,” I said. “I should have done that.”

“Why don‧t you come in with us?” said Mrs. Brown. “Do you have the time? You can tell us which kind is the best.”

So we did. Think about it, though. What are the chances that we would be walking by the Idle Hour at the exact moment George and Mrs. Brown stopped there? But there we were, ordering peach pie with ice cream in a booth with yellow vinyl seats. It felt like something that was supposed to happen. I felt that George and Mrs. Brown were people I was going to keep knowing somehow. It crossed my mind that if my mother had happened to see us sitting there, I would have had a hard time explaining how I knew them. What was I going to tell her when they showed up someday at my wedding? Well, that I could worry about later. But a reflex made me wipe the fog from the window and look out. That‧s when I saw what I almost didn‧t see that day, coming down the sidewalk. I saw Glenna and Maureen and a boy with his arm around Maureen‧s waist, and hers around his, girlfriend-boyfriend style.

Wow, I thought Who‧s that?

Glenna‧s smile was pasted to her frozen face as she matched her pace to theirs. From behind her determined brightness peered the eyes of a frightened animal. They passed by our window, and, for an accidental instant Glenna‧s rattled eyes met mine. I wanted to feel satisfaction and revenge. But it was too much like looking into a mirror. I couldn‧t fit any spite into the small smile I tossed out like a tiny, halfhearted lifeline.

They walked by, and I scrambled back up onshore.

thirteen

 

 

“W
E‧RE ALL A LITTLE GREEN AROUND THE GILLS,” MY MOTHER
said into the phone. She was still in her pink bathrobe and slippers. No makeup yet. She was telling Mrs. Schimpf we wouldn‧t be in church because of the flu. She winked at me as I took a package of English muffins out of the bread drawer. I was feeling better. And I was starved.

 

“Ed says he feels like he got hit with a Mack truck,” Mom told Mrs. Schimpf.

My dad and Chrisanne were still upstairs in bed, limp washrags trying not to move. The house was dark and still, except for the light over the kitchen sink and the radio on low. The smell of my toasting English muffin filled the stale air with the promise of health and life, like the first crocus of spring. But it probably made Dad and Chrisanne queasy. I needed to breathe some fresh air.

“I‧m going for a walk. Mom,” I said.

She tucked the phone under her chin and said quietly, “Okay, doll. Dress warm.”

The whole world was gray and brown. Even if the brick chimneys had managed to reach a few inches higher and snag holes in the heavy clouds, there probably would have been more gray behind them. The trees in the front yards were bare. A few unraked brown leaves, curly and brittle, lay scattered around. My footsteps made a nice thud in the cold, motionless air, which filled my nose and lungs and made me feel sharp and alive.

I looked around and found some colors hiding in the browns and grays. Dark green pines and spruces. A red awning. A blue garage door. Red berries on a bush. The purple-black bricks of the Baxters’ house. I myself was an emissary of color, moving through the world in a fluorescent red coat Chrisanne didn‧t know I was wearing and my eight-foot-long scarf. I trod once more over a much-trodden dirt path frozen hard as a rock through a small bunch of trees to the Boney Dump, a flat place where the power company dumps ash and kids ride their bikes on it. As I came out into the open, snow started to fall. I sat down on a rock and watched. The snow wasn‧t sticking to the ground yet, but I could look at the snowflakes on my coat sleeve. I knew each one was supposed to be completely different from every other one, but I couldn‧t see the differences that clearly. I could see that each one had exactly six skies, which seemed amazing enough for something just falling out of the sky. An extra detail, more than anyone would expect.

 

The snow fell more thickly. The hills, then the houses at the far edge of the Boney Dump, disappeared behind curtains of falling flakes. It felt private, like a room, with walls you could walk through. And then someone did Up out of the woods, just twenty feet away. I caught my breath for a second and ail the old warnings about the hoboes who were supposed to be loitering dangerously around the railroad tracks jumped into my mind. I had never actually seen a hobo. And I didn‧t see one now either. I saw Mr. Schimpf, of all people, huffing up out of the woods, in boots and floppy overcoat and hat with earflaps down and red nose and steamy clouds of breath. He must have walked four miles from their house in Birdvale to get there.

“Mr. Schimpf!” I said to him. “Why aren‧t you in church?”

“I am in church,” he said.

“Me, too,” said I.

He hiked on, vanishing behind the walls of snow. I wondered what had possessed him to walk so far on such a cold morning, but then look at me: I was sitting on a rock, getting accumulated on.

I sat there a little longer. The ground was white now; everything was white. There
was
something churchy about it. Everyday cares and troubles floated out of me, just far enough away so they looked interesting and manageable, none of them hopeless. Then they floated completely out of sight. Maybe I was just going into a state of bliss before freezing to death. But no, this was a peaceful, holy moment, a peaceful, holy place. I sat there a few minutes more; then I went back home.

By early afternoon the sun came out; everything was frosted and glittering. It reminded me of a department store window display of snow because it was so fresh and dean and perfect I guess it‧s supposed to be the other way around, the window reminding you of the real thing. But the real thing doesn‧t usually stay perfect for as long. At least not in Seldem. Maybe nowhere.