Broken for You (16 page)

She spotted Gus. He was across the room, standing in a long line. He looked very nice in his tuxedo. The red and green plaid cummerbund was especially festive. Margaret was reminded of those lovely tins of Scottish shortbread one sees in delicatessens.

She had learned a great deal about him, too, in the past few hours. For one thing, he was older than she—by five years! Yoga, he told her, was what had kept him young. He taught a class for seniors every day at the downtown YMCA. He had a busy social life—attending lectures, concerts, art exhibits. He took classes at the community college. He sang with a barbershop quartet. "In our minds," he said, "we need never 'grow old.' It's the wrong expression, isn't it, if you think about it: When we stop growing, we are old!" Although he didn't say so— he was far too gentlemanly to tell tales out of school—Margaret suspected that going on dates with lady friends was a regular event in his life. And understandably so. One would be hard pressed to find many eighty-year-old gentlemen who were ambulatory, much less charming and attractive. Margaret hoped he didn't find her looks lackluster or her company tiresome; her life experience, compared with his, was really quite small.

She caught his eye and waved. He smiled broadly and waved back.

"Hello, ma'am." Margaret turned around to find a handsome young man standing beside her. He looked somehow familiar. "I'm the one you gave the box to the other day," he said, registering her confusion. "You know, for Wanda?"

"Well, of course you are! You took the cake!"

"I'm Wanda's assistant, Troy."

"I'm Margaret Hughes."

"I'm wondering, Mrs. Hughes, do you have any idea where she might be?"
"No I don't. It certainly is puzzling. I thought I was supposed to meet her here in the lobby after the play, but perhaps I was mistaken."

She scanned the room again. There was Gus, still standing in line, chatting congenially with a theatre patron behind him. She wondered what he'd look like wearing a kilt.

"You know," Troy continued, "when I first saw you, I thought you were Wanda's mother."

It was a bittersweet thing to hear. "You did?"

Troy nodded. Margaret saw something behind his eyes, a compassionate, assessing wisdom.
Old soul,
she thought.
Stillwater.
"No. Wanda just lives with me. We're housemates."

"She told me that she doesn't have a mother," he continued. "That's right, as far as I understand it."

"She was really firm about it—the way she said it, I mean. She seemed . . . angry."

"It's probably a difficult subject."

"I keep wondering what she meant," he said, almost as if he were talking to himself.

"Well, she didn't mean it literally, of course. I think she was just saying that her mother is dead. Her father, too, I believe." "She's an orphan?"

"Well, yes," Margaret went on. "I believe it happened a long time ago, when Wanda was quite small. Still, it's a terrible thing." "I can't imagine growing up without your folks."
Why, he's in love with her!
Margaret realized.

"She's an orphan," Troy reiterated disbelievingly. He stared at a solitary dollop of hummus and an empty pocket bread on his plate. "How do you ever get over that?"

"Well, you don't, of course." Margaret suddenly felt ashamed of herself for not having recognized the single thing about Wanda that should have been obvious, something this young man had seen instantly. "Some things one isn't meant to get over."

He narrowed his eyes—they were kind and intelligent and there was a great deal of thinking going on behind them—and nodded. "Would you please excuse me, ma'am? I'll find out where she is and tell her you've been looking for her."

"That's very kind."

"It's been a pleasure talking with you, Mrs. Hughes."

Margaret offered her hand. "You as well, dear." She watched him go.
I
must remember to tell Wanda that it's perfectly fine for her to have houseguests,
she thought.

There were still five people ahead of Gus. Margaret noticed that he was now standing on one leg. His other leg was bent at the knee; it crossed over his standing leg in a way that allowed his foot to rest high up against his thigh. His eyes were closed. His smile was beatific. His balance was perfect.
He look
s
as if he's having a pleasant dream,
Margaret thought.
About butterflies, maybe. Or Campbell's Cream of Mushroom-Soup.

Gus opened his eyes and caught Margaret staring at him. Flustered and embarrassed, she extemporized a broad, lengthy pantomime— occasionally enlisting the aid of her empty paper plate as a prop— indicating her plans to go upstairs to the ladies' lounge, powder her nose, conduct another search for the mysteriously missing Wanda, and then reunite with him back in the lobby.

At the end of this performance, which garnered not only Gus's fascination but that of several theatre patrons in the immediate vicinity as well, Gus nodded robustly and lifted his glass and Margaret's in an expansive toasting gesture. She made a small curtsy and hurried upstairs.

It was nearly midnight. Margaret had hoped to find Wanda and thank her for the tickets before she asked Gus to take her home, but since the girl was nowhere to be found, Margaret wasn't sure what to do.

She walked through the ladies' lounge, where two pale, silent young women stood at opposite ends of a very long mirror; they were both applying lipstick that seemed, in Margaret's opinion anyway, several shades too dark.

Entering the vast tiled bathroom—which appeared to be completely empty—Margaret went into a stall. After a few moments, she heard someone crying quietly.

She bent over and looked under the wall to her left. At the end of the long row of stalls, she spied two tiny, fine-boned feet huddled close together; they were wearing black evening shoes with stiletto heels and
mall rhinestone accents on the ankle straps. Next to the feet was an overstuffed backpack.

"Wanda?"

There was more muffled snuffling. Margaret spoke louder. "Hello!"

The feet came to attention. "Hello?" replied a congested, gluey-sounding voice. "Are you talking to me?"

"Wanda?"

"Margaret?"

"Yes. Are you all right?"

"Of course! Fine and dandy! I just—" She erupted in a fresh round of sobs.

Margaret felt a need to express a sense of sympathy and connection— even though Wanda couldn't see her, of course—so she continued to study Wanda's feet in hopes of gaining further clues as to her state of mind.

A pair of wooden clogs, a pair of Reeboks, a pair of Rockports, and a pair of turquoise cowboy boots came into the bathroom.
People certainly attend the theatre wearing all kinds of clothing these days,
Margaret thought, regarding her own shoes—modest, dark blue Naturalizer pumps in a style called Beryl which she'd polished earlier in the day.

Margaret and Wanda stayed in their stalls. Wanda's crying did not, as one might have expected, abate; instead, it seemed to intensify. Toilets flushed. Stall doors banged open. The shoes made their exits— rather more quickly, Margaret noticed, than they had entered.

"Your shoes are very elegant!" Margaret called, once the bathroom was again empty.

"Thank you!" Wanda bawled.

Margaret emerged from her stall and washed her hands. She peeled the flaking silver foil from a roll of breath mints and placed one on her tongue. She patted her hair. She freshened her powder and her lipstick. She looked down the long row of stalls. Wanda's door was still closed, and behind it, Wanda kept on crying.
This certainly is familiar,
she thought.

Someone was coming into the ladies' room lounge.

"I saw Jason Robards do it, you know," a voice said.

"No. Really?"

"Years ago, of course. On Broadway."

"That must have been quite something."

Margaret took a step away from the sink and looked over her left shoulder. Two women—Margaret guessed them to be somewhere in their sixties—were slowly making their way through the lounge toward the bathroom.

One of the women was strikingly tall and wore a bulky woolen cape. Two emaciated, support-stockinged legs and a wooden cane protruded from the bottom; the woman's head emerged from the top, its near-perfect roundness accentuated by the fact that it was nearly completely bald. The overall effect was of a perambulatory floor lamp, with the bald head providing a small, globular finial.

The other woman was shorter, and the shape and size of her torso suggested that it had been formed by adhering together five large, adipose spheres: two for the breasts, one for the stomach, and two for the buttocks. She was wearing a multicolored peasant getup—long full skirt and billowy blouse—accessorized with massive amounts of gold jewelry. This seemed to provide the wearer with a constant source of irritation; she pulled, grasped, rearranged, straightened, and twisted her numerous necklaces, bracelets, and earrings relentlessly—exactly, Margaret thought, the way people attempt to physically command unruly pets or children who won't go where they're told.

Why doesn't she just ta
k
e them off?
Margaret thought, annoyed.

The woman began to leaf through her program with one hand as she reprimanded her unruly necklaces with the other. "The fellow tonight was quite good, of course. . . ." Her jewelry clanged in protestation. "But he couldn't possibly compare with Jason Robards."

"Well, of course not. How could he?"

"He was an alcoholic, you know."

"Who?"

"Jason Robards, of course. Most truly brilliant artists are. I suppose it's the price one pays." She dropped her program and shoulder bag on a lounge table, bounced over to the mirror, and began fiddling with the backs of her earrings; from what Margaret could see, they consisted of multiple doodads affixed to numerous small chains—like miniature charm bracelets suspended vertically from her earlobes.
They'd be the perfect earrings,
Margaret thought,
for
the ghost of Jacob Marley.
Casting a stern look at her own reflection in the mirror, Margaret intoned quietly, in her best effort at a voice from beyond the pale, "I wear a
ponderous
chain. . . ."

"These earrings are killing me!" the woman exclaimed. Her bald friend, who had sunk into one of the lounge chairs, gave her a disapproving look.

From behind her stall door, Wanda started sobbing again.

Seeing both women cast puzzled glances in her direction, Margaret faked several explosive sneezes and began vigorously pulling sheets of paper toweling from the dispenser. It made rhythmic, thwacking noise.

"And then the girl," the woman continued over the racket, retrieving her purse and program. "The one playing the daughter."

"Yes." With a great effort, her friend pushed herself out of the lounge chair and once again began inching toward the bathroom on her thin legs and her wooden cane.

"I found her a bit. . ."

"What?"

"Brittle!"

"Brittle."

"Yes! That's what I thought too! She was much too brittle. No softness. No sense of transformation, you know. At the end of the play, I mean. When one needs that."

"At the end, yes," the bald woman said.

"She lacked nuance! She hadn't enough colors!"

Just as the women were about to enter the bathroom, Margaret stepped in front of them and blocked their further progress. "Excuse me ladies," she said, "but the bathroom is out of order."

"What do you mean?" demanded the fat woman.

"Nothing in here is working. It's out of order."

"All of it?" the bald one asked.

"Yes. Something broke. A pipe." Margaret cleared her throat. "That's it!" she announced heartily. "An important main conduit! A significant main pipeline to the facility! Broken!"

Margaret paused, noting that the bathroom was suddenly, eerily silent. She turned around and bent over to see whether Wanda's feet were still in her stall. They were. Margaret was relieved to see one of the feet move slightly, as if it were sighing.

"Everything is stable for the time being," Margaret continued, straightening herself into what she hoped was an authoritative posture, "but we're expecting a flood at any moment."

"But, what are we supposed to DO?" the fat woman whined. "I have to pee so bad my teeth are floating!"

"The theatre apologizes for any inconvenience." Margaret placed herself between the two women and began to usher them toward the door. "Under these special circumstances, you are of course welcome to use the men's room." "The MEN'S room?" "Yes. It's quite all right. Just call out before you enter. You know: 'Hello there! Women present! Plumbing emergency!'"

The fat woman eyed Margaret's unadorned suit jacket suspiciously. "And you would be?"