Spare Change (17 page)

Olivia’s marriage had come
and gone with the quickness of a tornado.  She had everything for a moment—then
there was nothing but loneliness. “What have I done?” she would sigh, picturing
the brass nameplate that for thirty years sat atop her desk at the Southern
Atlantic Telephone Company District Office. For over five decades she’d been Olivia
Ann Westerly, and regardless of the circumstances, couldn’t settle into the
wearing of any other name. Once, when the Parcel Post deliveryman asked for
Missus Doyle, Olivia said, “Are you sure you don’t mean
Boyle?
There’s
an Althea
Boyle
downstairs on the third floor.” The puzzled driver
indicated the nameplate on her door read Doyle, but she simply sighed and said,
“Ah,
that
Doyle
. That was dear, sweet Charlie.” 

Olivia could not get used to
living in the Wyattsville apartment. She was plagued with the feeling of a
person passing through, a visitor with no right to clear away Charlie’s clothes
or discard the yellowing toothbrush. Even after she’d been there for months,
she’d crawl into bed, her clothes on and shoes within reach, always ready to
leave at a moment’s notice. Most nights she’d lie awake for hours, counting
stars, watching as the moon rose and then faded into nothingness. Not until
daylight threaded a ribbon of pink across the sky, would she drift off to sleep
and then she’d dream of being back in her own apartment. She’d see the pink
wallpaper and the polka dot towels in the bathroom, the geranium on the kitchen
window sill, the blue silk bedspread. When she woke up, she’d wonder how she
came to be in an altogether different place—a bedroom where there was a large
brown ashtray on the night table and a pair of men’s slippers poking out from
beneath the bed. Once she remembered, she’d cover her head and slide back under
the blanket, hoping another hour or two of sleep would remedy the sorry state
of affairs. 

Charlie’s apartment was
nothing more than a temporary stopover, Olivia told herself, a place to stay
until she could move back to Richmond, where she had friends to visit and
things to do. Of course, she no longer had her wonderful job, which was of
considerable concern, but surely she could come up with something else. With
that as a plan, her suitcase remained packed and sitting alongside the front
door, week after week.  She bought only enough groceries to last a day, two at
the most. She passed right by the four-roll packages of toilet paper and
tomatoes that would have to sit on the windowsill for a day to ripen. “Who
knows
where
I’ll be by then,” she’d sigh and opt for an overripe avocado
instead. 

When Clara Bowman brought a
dish garden for the kitchen windowsill, Olivia refused to accept it. “I
honestly don’t think I’ll be staying,” she said.

Clara, forgetting the urn on
the living room mantle, replied, “Why, Charlie Doyle would turn over in his grave,
if he heard such a thing!”      

Still Olivia felt she
belonged somewhere else. Richmond, she reasoned, it had to be Richmond. Twice
she went to visit the building where she’d lived—where, if she’d had any sense,
she’d still be living.  The first time she’d gone as far as the front walk and
then stood there for almost an hour remembering how it felt to reach into her
handbag, take out the key, unlock the door and walk in. Two days later, she
came back again, this time venturing into the vestibule. It was all wrong—the
walls, which for as long as she could remember had been a glossy white, were
now painted flamingo pink. Gone was the serviceable gray carpet; in its place a
flowered thing already marked with scuffs of dirt. Olivia sighed and flopped
down on the lobby chair, which had been covered over in a hideous shade of
rose. 

Unfortunately, Helene
Kapuski, a woman with a tongue rumored to be so loose it flapped at both ends,
happened along at that very moment. “I certainly hope you’re not thinking of
moving back,” Helene said, “because your apartment’s been rented to a charming
young couple from Atlanta. He’s a stockbroker. Charlene, his wife, she’s a
decorator.” The words stung Olivia like a swarm of angry hornets. “Charlene was
the one who did the lobby,” Helene beamed. “And, your old apartment—why you
wouldn’t even recognize it!” When she started telling how they’d painted the
walls apple green, Olivia walked off, so despondent, she cried the entire way home.

Afterwards she abandoned all
hope of returning to her old apartment and started to think that perhaps
Richmond was no longer the place for her. Two days later she dug the road maps
from the trunk of her car and began to consider the alternatives. For days on
end she traced her finger along the various highways—North, South, East, West—until
finally she colored bright yellow stars on top of Norfolk, Virginia and
Charleston, South Carolina. A seaport town, Olivia thought, now
that’s
the sort of place for a woman starting over! She promised herself that once the
weather turned a bit warmer, she’d drive over to Norfolk and look around.  

But in February, everything
changed. It started when Clara announced, “I’m going to need a new dress for
the Valentine’s Day party.”  She then suggested Olivia ought to have one also.

“Me?” Olivia answered. “Why,
I’ve no need of a new dress.”

“Oh no?” Clara took hold of
Olivia’s arm and tugged her over to the full length mirror. “Look at that!”

Olivia was taken aback by
the reflection of a sorrowful looking woman dressed head to toe in black. “This
isn’t
me
,” she said. 

“It is you!” Clara snapped.
“You’re a woman who’s forgotten how to live.”

“I’ve done no such thing,”
Olivia answered indignantly.

“Oh? What then? You
choose
to look like a lump of sackcloth and ashes?”

“Well, no,” Olivia sighed,
“but with my being here so temporary…”

The next thing Olivia knew,
she’d been bundled out the door and was on her way to Baumhauser’s, which was
supposedly the finest department store in downtown Wyattsville. “We’ll have
lunch at the Cocky Rooster,” Clara said, tugging Olivia along, “then we’ll
spend the afternoon shopping.”

“All afternoon?” Olivia
moaned.

Were it not for the two
glasses of burgundy Clara foisted upon her, Olivia would not have given the red
tulle dress a second glance. She certainly would not have lugged it into the
dressing room and slid it over her head. She was a woman of practical tastes, a
woman who appreciated the reserved sophistication of black shantung, yet
somehow she allowed herself to be talked into buying a flouncy-skirted thing
that teetered on the brink of making her appear promiscuous. 

“Whatever was I thinking?”
Olivia sighed as she hung the dress on the inside of her closet door. “Me, a
woman in mourning,” she shook her head in what appeared to be disbelief, “how
could I?” For three days, she avoided looking at the dress. “I’ll not allow
myself to be coerced into attending some silly party,” she’d grumble then
quickly snap shut the closet door. And, when Clara brought over a pair of
heart-shaped earrings, Olivia begrudgingly tossed them onto her dressing table.

Now, if the morning of
February fourteenth had been drizzling rain, or blustery cold, things might
have happened differently; but when the dawn broke with such an unseasonable
burst of sunshine the residents of Wyattsville woke up believing spring had
arrived. Windows were suddenly flung open and radios turned up so loud that
merchants downtown figured it had to be some sort of a parade. Maggie Cooper
forgot about the arthritis plaguing her knee and began tangoing across her
living room. Walter Krause, a man who had not danced in twenty-seven years,
pulled his tuxedo from the closet and shook the dust from it. Olivia, although
she had not for one second considered going to the Valentine’s Day party, took
a look at the dress hanging on her closet door and gasped, “What shoes am I
going to wear?” She hurriedly dressed and headed downtown, where she was
fortunate enough to find a pair of red satin pumps a scant half-size smaller
than she preferred.   

That evening when Olivia
slipped into the red dress, she immediately felt ten years younger; and after
she’d clipped the rhinestone hearts to her ears, a rainbow of sparkles began dancing
across her skin. She painted her mouth the exact same shade of red as her
dress, then twice checked her reflection, as if she feared the glow that had
settled upon her might up and disappear the way Charlie had. 

She had no sooner situated
herself in a chair, when Fred McGinty strolled over and asked if Olivia would
come and sit at his table; moments later Frank Casper did the same, and after
him it was Wayne Dolby.  Although she thanked them all, she remained in the
seat alongside Clara. “I came with Clara,” she told Fred, giving him the most
flirtatious of smiles, “so I’m sure you understand.”

Fred gave her shoulder a
squeeze. “You’re forgiven,” he said, “but only if you promise to let me take
you to the Saint Patrick’s Corned Beef Dinner.”

By the end of the evening,
Olivia also had agreed to partner with Wayne for the Tuesday Bridge Club,
accompany Harry Hornsby to Bingo and co-chair the spring dance along with
Barbara Jean Conklin; who, she now realized, was far less snooty than
originally thought. She’d danced seventeen waltzes, a dozen fox trots and a
tango, without once remembering the soreness of her bunion. That night, realizing
the red tulle dress was unfit for any sort of sleeping, Olivia opened her
suitcase and took out a pair of cotton plisse pajamas. She then folded back the
coverlet and curled up beneath the blanket where, by the oddest circumstance, she
found a spot in the mattress which molded itself to precisely the same size and
shape of her body.       

The following morning Olivia,
rationalizing the damp air of a seaport town would more than likely aggravate a
person’s sinuses, went to Piggly Wiggly and shopped until her grocery cart was
filled to the brim. In addition to the dozens of other things, she bought a
super-sized box of laundry detergent, four green as grass bananas, and a
fifteen pound sack of Idaho potatoes. The grocery order was so large that it
overflowed the trunk of her car and left a canned ham and twelve bottles of
ginger ale to ride in the back seat. “Oh dear,” she sighed, momentarily
considering the possibility she’d gone a bit overboard. Of course such a
thought flew by quickly enough, for on the way home she stopped at the florist
and bought six potted plants, one of which was a hyacinth without so much as a single
bud. “That won’t flower until April,” the florist warned, but Olivia plopped it
into the basket anyway.

 Once home, Olivia set about
filling what strangely enough had become
her
kitchen cupboards with the
store of foodstuffs. She placed three different kinds of cereal and a row of
spices on the first shelf, then stacked cans of mushrooms, corn and peas on the
second. She lined up row after row of Campbell’s Soup atop the next shelf, then
wedged in packages of macaroni and cheese. After she’d squeezed the final box
of beans into place, Olivia threw open the cupboard doors and admired the look
of what she saw—the cabinets which for months had been empty as a broken heart,
were now chock full; and by some odd coincidence there was not a vacant spot on
a single one of the shelves. “Providence,” Olivia sighed happily; then she
began to wonder why she hadn’t realized from the start—
this
was
where
she was destined to be
. It’s
so
obvious, she thought, why even a
blind person would have seen it right off. 

When Clara stopped by early
in the afternoon, Olivia was already at work unpacking. “What’s this?” Clara
asked, her voice registering a note of surprise. She had come to expect an air
of gloominess, but instead there was Olivia, humming a rather pleasant tune and
pulling clothes from her suitcase. 

Olivia dropped her blue
blouse atop a pile of things to be laundered. “I’ve come to my senses,” she
said. “A woman alone needs to live in a place where she’s got friends, where
she can put down roots and feel she belongs!”

“I don’t get it…” Clara
stammered. “What exactly are you saying?”

“It’s simple,” Olivia
hesitated long enough to consider a pair of brown shoes she’d pulled from the
suitcase; she wrinkled her nose, set them aside and continued on. “Last night I
got to remembering something Canasta told me when I was looking to find my way
back home. ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘people don’t find a home, they gotta make one. Sometimes
sad folks hurry off to some new place and then when they get there, they say,
why this ain’t home at all—thing is, you got to give it time. You got to set
growing things on the window sill, say howdy to your neighbors and write little
notes on the wall calendar, then one day you get a whiff of your own stew
simmering and it hits like a brick dropped square onto your head—you’re right
where God intended you to be.’”

“I still don’t get it,”
Clara said, “you trying to tell me you made a stew?”

“Actually, I made a
meatloaf. But, that’s not what’s important. See, the stew was simply Canasta’s
way of meaning a person had settled in.”

“So,” Clara said, still
looking a bit confused, “Does this mean you’re staying?”

“Absolutely!”    

Although Clara claimed she
had already defrosted a stewing chicken, she stayed for supper and declared the
meatloaf to be one of the best she’d ever tasted. “It should be,” Olivia said
wistfully, for in it she’d used the very last of the seeds given to her by
Canasta Jones. Once the meatloaf was gone, she’d be on her own.