Leftovers: A Novel (2 page)

The only thing he was lacking was intelligence. And it wasn’t until he was held back in school a second time in his sophomore year that he even noticed Vivian Lawson. As a student she made straight A’s and was always buried in a book, volunteering for the prom committee, of which she never attended, or supporting the Humanities Club. And although she wasn’t popular, athletic, or pretty enough to be a cheerleader, she was allowed to join the Pep Club. Like all the girls at Abbot High she had a mad crush on Paul Hayes and when attending rallies, Vivian consciously projected her high-pitched voice directly at him, shouting cheers that sent annoying shivers throughout his entire body.

Everyone in town knew that the Lawsons were the wealthy owners of the Lawson Woolen Mills. Even though the factories had closed their doors for the final time ten years earlier, the family still had more money than they knew what to do with. And when William Lawson, Vivian’s father, died of a heart attack in 1947, when Vivian was 18 years old, it was assumed that she, being his only child, would become heiress apparent. Although Paul had barely half a brain, he was smart enough to know that he wasn’t going to make a living playing professional sports. But it was Oscar who came up with the idea that Paul should court Vivian.

Unfortunately for father and son, they discovered after Paul had married Vivian that William Lawson had died without drawing up his will. All of his money was left to his wife, Irene. Disappointed in her daughter’s choice of husband but eager to get her out of her hair, she offered Vivian her blessings and but a tiny portion of the gargantuan inheritance.

•  •  •

Paul looked at himself in the mirror again as he lovingly shaved his face. “Hello smarmy,” he cooed. He had recently heard a woman call him that when he made a pass at her while walking his beat through the center of town and being as smart as he was, he took it as a compliment.

A loud clash of pots and pans echoed up to the bathroom from the kitchen. Paul winced at the sound and cut himself with the razor. “Damn her!”

Vivian was a terrible cook and an even worse housekeeper. But one couldn’t blame her. She had grown up in a massive brick mansion within a household with not one, but four maids. Maid 1 did the heavy cleaning like the washing of windows, waxing of floors and polishing of silver. Maid 2 did the light cleaning and the laundry. Maid 3 was the cook and Maid 4 attended to Mrs. Lawson’s personal needs and grooming.

Vivian was not allowed to do any chores. Nor was she allowed to speak to the help. But she did call them by their numbers. Not because she was insolent or even being creative, it was what her mother called them. And whenever Mrs. Lawson was far off in her wing of the house or out for the day to shop or play bridge with her friends, Vivian would try to strike up conversations with any one of the numbers. Not because they were friendly or even interesting. Vivian was simply lonely. On occasion, it was Maid 3 who would permit Vivian to sit on a stool and watch her cook, but she was forbidden to say a word.

Most young girls, brought up amidst such wealth, were sent off to highbrow European boarding schools by their mothers. Or at the very least, they were polished and perfected at local charm academies. But not Vivian. Her mother, Irene, resented her existence. Never having wanted any children at all, she didn’t refer to her daughter as a surprise or even an accident. In her eyes, Vivian was a mistake. And consequently, she ignored her child as much as she could.

Now married to Paul, Vivian looked back upon her childhood and the way she was brought up with disgust and condemnation and was seriously trying to teach herself how to be a normal housewife.

With her unwashed hair haphazardly pinned up out of her face with a few bobby pins, Vivian paused for a moment at the bottom of the staircase to see if she could hear Paul and then rushed back into the kitchen to study a cookbook. On the counter was a bowl of eggs while a pot of water sat on her massive Wedgewood gas stove.

She flipped through the book, eyed a page and then put it down on the counter. She hesitated a moment before walking over to the stove, then stood as far away from it as possible while still trying to see if the water was boiling. Top of the line when made in the early 1930s, this culinary dinosaur actually frightened Vivian to death.

•  •  •

At the age of ten and hungry for her mother’s affection, Vivian wanted to surprise her on her birthday with breakfast in bed. Early in the morning, before anyone was up and the cook had entered the kitchen, she put on her favorite Sunday dress with matching red plastic belt and was eager to make pancakes, all on her own. Although she remembered the necessary ingredients, she was a bit creative when it came to the measurements of each item. And after enthusiastically mixing it all together the kitchen looked like a war zone, the battle fought with eggs, flour and milk.

With both hands she muscled the heavy cast iron skillet up onto the gas stove, poured all of the batter into the pan making one large disk and then turned the burner’s knob on full blast. She had watched Maid 3 do this every time she lit the stove but when she reached for the box of matches, they were empty. She leisurely searched the kitchen for more. Finally she found them and struck the first stick against the sulfur; the next thing she remembered was being driven to the hospital in an ambulance.

The oven had exploded. The skillet flew towards Vivian, hitting the side of her skull and knocked her out as the fire ignited her dress. Made of light cotton, it disintegrated in an instant and she suffered first and second degree burns. Remarkably, the only scar that remained was the one made round her waist when the belt she had been wearing melted to her skin. Needless to say, this fueled her life-long hatred for belts. All the hair on her body was singed off and Vivian’s eyebrows never grew back.

And although the house escaped with just smoke damage, her mother’s kitchen was completely destroyed. Suffice it to say, it was not a happy day for either mother or daughter. In fact, Vivian’s mother never forgave her and never missed an opportunity to rub this disaster in her daughter’s face, even as an adult. Vivian often wondered which her mother valued more, her beloved dream kitchen, which was expensive but easy to replace, or her daughter’s life.

•  •  •

So Vivian’s fear of gas stoves was quite understandable. The Wedgewood was monstrous. It was equipped with six burners, two metal panel covers, a large roasting oven, a separate pastry oven which would never be used, a broiler, a griddle, built-in spice racks with no spices and a warming drawer which she kept her house slippers in during the winter months. And now, 15 years after that disastrous morning and with great trepidation, Vivian found herself struggling to create yet another special breakfast.

Her eyes darted to the teapot-shaped wall clock and knew she had to fly. Vivian opened a bottle of vinegar and splashed some into the pot of boiling water and then picked up an egg. She timidly knocked the shell against the edge of the bowl and nothing happened. She tapped it again with no results. She hit it harder and her hand crushed the entire egg, splattering it onto the front of her dress. She wiped it off with her hands and then cracked one more egg, gently letting it slip into the boiling water. Proud of herself, she wiped the sweat off of her brow with her forearm and then cracked another egg and slipped it in.

She reached over to the toaster and pushed two slices of bread down. Then she ran to the refrigerator and took out a glass bowl full of cut up fresh fruit, which was covered with waxed paper and held on with a rubber band. Keeping her distance, she took a quick peek at the eggs in the pot and then pulled the waxed paper off the bowl of fruit. Suddenly, the rubber band shot off and snapped Vivian in the face.

“Ah, geez,” she moaned as her hand went up to her cheek.

“Vivian?” Paul hollered from upstairs. “Where’s my tie?”

“On your tie rack!” she yelled back, shaking her head.

Looking at the clock again, she spooned the fruit salad onto a plate as the bread popped up. She grabbed an open can of deviled ham and smeared it onto the toast and threw it onto the plate. Vivian then took a slotted spoon and fished out a poached egg and made an attempt at landing it on top of the ham. She placed the whole mess on the table and studied the plate.

“I forgot the Hollandaise,” she grumbled as she punched her thigh and grabbed an orange. She slit it in half and jammed it onto a reamer and twisted with all her might. She juiced the other half, dumped it into a glass and set it on the table.

She poured a cup of coffee and set it next to the juice as she heard Paul coming down the stairs. Beyond excited, she reached into her pocket and took out the small wrapped present and preciously placed it next to the plate of food.

Vivian quickly fumbled in her pocket again and pulled out a tube of lipstick and smeared it across her mouth. As Paul turned the corner and entered the kitchen wearing his policeman’s uniform she spun around and smiled but he didn’t make eye contact.

He picked up the glass of juice and downed it. “I’m late.”

Without acknowledging the plate of food or the gift, he walked out of the kitchen.

Thrown, Vivian wondered if this breakfast had blown up in her face too. She grabbed the present and rushed into the hall just as he was opening the front door.

“Paul,” she said, touching his arm.

He stopped as she stretched up to kiss him on the mouth but he only allowed her his cheek.

Deflated, she watched him as he made his way down their cracked cement walkway overgrown with weeds, to his brand new 1954 aqua and white two-tone Ford Fairlane parked in the driveway. He stopped and looked back at Vivian who was watching him from the front door.

“Don’t forget the dry cleaning and give them that dress. It needs taking in.”

She mechanically touched the dress as she watched him open the door to the car.

“Paul,” she shouted, “Happy . . . ”

“It looks like rain,” he stated, cutting her off as he got into the car and slammed the door shut.

“Yes. Yes it does,” she whispered as she watched him back out of the drive.

She waved to him, still clutching the wrapped box and then looked up to the beautiful, sunny, cloudless sky, and frowned.

Vivian changed into a simple blue button-down shirtdress minus the belt. It hit her leg about mid-calf and had large sensible patch pockets. It was quite stylish with its capped three-quarter length sleeves but without the cinching at the waist, she looked like she was wearing her grandfather’s nightshirt.

She slipped into a pair of sensible flats and checked herself briefly in the bathroom mirror. It’s not that Vivian was unattractive; she just didn’t know how to play up her best features. Her self-cut shoulder length hair needed a style and what make-up she did wear, just wasn’t the right choice for her pale skin tone. She studied the woman looking back at her in the mirror and sadly realized that she hadn’t a clue.

Still thrown and depressed at how the celebratory breakfast played out, or didn’t, she glanced at her wristwatch and walked out of the bathroom as if she were on automatic pilot. She picked up her uniform from the bedroom floor and headed downstairs. She passed through the kitchen, which she hadn’t bothered to clean up, grabbed her purse and left through the front door.

It was unseasonably warm for early September. In fact, the summer of 1954 in Abbot was a scorcher, breaking all temperature records. What rain they did have evaporated as quickly as it fell.

With a glazed look on her face, Vivian came out of her house, locked the front door and headed to the garage. Paul promised that when they married he would take care of the gardening but obviously he hadn’t stayed true to his word. The rhododendrons, azaleas, evergreens, and juniper bushes that bordered the 1930s cape had long since withered and died. And the front lawn was so parched, what was grass now looked like a yard full of hay. The extreme heat had even made the red paint on the siding of the house chip and peel, which to Vivian, made it look like it had chicken pox.

She had to use all her strength to pull up the warped wooden windowless garage door. There sat her dusty 1944 second-hand Buick sedan. She jerked open the rusty door and climbed up into the driver’s seat. After a few tries she managed to start the engine. Without looking behind her, she backed out and swiped the car against the side of the garage. She had no reaction.

Oblivious to the world, she continued down and out of the drive and onto the street. Without checking for traffic, she just missed hitting another car as it passed by the house. The driver honked their horn, startling Vivian, as she ground the gears into first and drove on.

The Hayes lived on Osgood Street, which was peppered with beautiful homes and manicured lawns. Considering her upbringing, it was ironic that Vivian’s house was definitely the eyesore of the neighborhood.

As she turned off of Osgood and onto Clark Road she passed by two women walking arm-in-arm. Over the years she had trained herself not to look, but she could tell from her peripheral vision that the moment they sited her driving by in her boat-sized jalopy, their two heads turned to each other so quickly they looked like magnetic kissing dolls.

The town of Abbot was small and quaint but the residents were bored and nosey. And the gossiper’s favorite target was the poor little rich . . . poor girl. The townsfolk had a morbid curiosity about Vivian, as if they delighted in knowing that this child that was born into so much luxury, money and prosperity, was now living such an austere and peculiar life.