Spare Change (18 page)

After Clara had gone home,
Olivia finished unpacking her suitcase. With a lengthy stretch of dresses,
skirts and blouses lined up across the sofa, she went in search of hangers and
found three, even those she’d had to pry loose from a closet still crowded with
Charlie’s clothes. She searched again and twice thought she’d come upon an
empty hanger, but as it turned out, both had trousers hanging across the bar. 

It seemed highly impractical
for a man to have so many clothes, particularly since he’d been deceased for
several months and no longer had need of them. Initially, Olivia removed only
the plaid suits, thinking they were somewhat outdated anyway, but that gave her
just four more hangers.  She then did away with all of the suits, grey, blue,
green and one that was the color of day old buttermilk. “Why he wouldn’t be
caught dead in this thing,” she mumbled without thinking. After the suits were
gone, it seemed rather senseless to hang on to a collection of ties, sport
jackets and slacks, so one by one Olivia removed the things from their hangers
and folded them neatly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into the lapel of his grey
blazer, “I never wanted it to be this way.” When she caught the whiff of
cologne that lingered on his blue cardigan, she cried for a good half-hour.
“Please try to understand,” she sobbed, “I’ve got to get on with life.” When
she pulled his shoes from the closet floor, Olivia slid her feet into them and
drifted back to the time when he had waltzed her across the dance floor as if
there was a carpet of rose petals beneath them. 

But it was his bathrobe, the
bathrobe that still carried the odor of not cologne, but
him
, which
caused Olivia to fall upon the bed and weep through most of the night. By
morning, she knew what she had to do.

As soon as the sun came up,
Olivia telephoned Clara, “If you’re not too busy, I was hoping you could come
for a visit,” she moaned soulfully,

“Visit? At seven o’clock in
the morning?” Clara growled; then she plopped down the telephone. She rolled
over to go back to sleep, but the sound of Olivia’s voice stayed with her—the
echo of neediness squeezed in between words. Moments later, Clara stormed into
Olivia’s apartment looking like a bulldog in yellow pajamas. “Okay now,” she
said, thumping her hands onto her hips, “what’s the problem?”

Olivia explained how she’d
suffered through the night and finally come to the conclusion that she needed a
bit of help, advice maybe, or someone to lend a hand. “I know it’s what needs
to be done, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of Charlie’s things,” she
sniffled. “One minute I’m thinking about painting the bathroom or getting new
curtains for the kitchen, then some little belonging of his grabs hold of me
and I switch right back to crying.” Olivia stopped to blow her nose and wipe a
well of water from her eyes, “See that,” she moaned, “it happens every time. I
take a jacket or shirt out of the closet and whoosh—I end up with a picture of
him wearing it. I go into the bathroom and run head on into his decrepit old
toothbrush, waiting for him to come back. And, his bathrobe! One glance at that
and I start wishing I was buried alongside of him.”   

 Any of the other residents
would have noticed the way Clara’s head was cocked to one side, the corner of
her mouth curled and one eye flickering like a firefly. But Olivia was a
relative newcomer, unaware such actions, along with the tapping of Clara’s
right foot, were lifelong habits that clicked on whenever there was any heavy
thinking. “What you need is breakfast,” Clara finally decreed, “Meet me in the
lobby in a half-hour.  We’re going to the Pancake House.”

“Pancake House?” Olivia
echoed, thinking a stack of pancakes didn’t seem to be much of a solution. She
would have preferred an offer of help, or maybe the name of a charity in need
of men’s clothing.    

Of course, Clara made no
mention of how in the span of ten minutes she could line up a crew of neighbors
to clear out every last trace of Charlie Doyle. Not that anyone intentionally
wanted to do such a thing, because Charlie was certainly well-liked, but once a
man was dead, he was dead—and dead men simply didn’t come back. That was one
thing Clara understood only too well, for she’d spent almost six years mourning
the loss of her Henry. Were it not for Martha Cunningham taking matters into
her own hands, Clara herself might still be in the same sorrowful situation.

The first call was to Peggy
Mendel. “Yep,” Peggy answered, “I’ve got a storage room full of cartons, but my
tape is all dried out.”

Donna Swift had five
perfectly good rolls of tape, and a hand truck suitable for hauling the cartons
off to another spot.

Norma Ryan knew a man who
lived in the building across the street and was somewhat down on his luck.
“He’s about the same size as Charlie, and Heaven knows he could use some nice
clothes,” she said. After that she segued into telling how on the coldest day
imaginable, she’d witnessed the poor man shivering in a threadbare sweater; halfway
through the story Clara interrupted and told her to save it for later. 

“Now, you understand what’s
to be done?” Clara asked Maggie Cooper who’d agreed to take charge of the
operation. “The key is under the mat; so the minute we leave, you girls go in
and pack up Charlie’s suits, jackets, trousers, shoes, slippers, pipes,
ashtrays, underwear, and, don’t forget the toothbrush. Everything, get rid of
everything.”

“Even the ashes?” Maggie
asked, “Get rid of the ashes?”

“Lord God, no!” Clara gasped.
Charlie Doyle had been a friend, someone she’d dated and on a few occasions
allowed certain familiarities. It was one thing to clear away his belongings,
but quite another to dispose of the man himself. That was something Olivia was
going to have to deal with herself—like it or not.

At ten minutes before eight,
the two women met in the lobby and started for the Pancake House. Clara had to stretch
out the period of time they’d be gone, so she turned to Olivia and said, “It’s
a lovely morning, let’s walk.”

“Walk?” Olivia answered, “…the
whole two miles?” She eyed the grey clouds hovering overhead and wondered if
perhaps Clara, well-meaning as she might be, was suffering from a lapse in judgment. 

“Fresh air gives a person a
healthier state of mind.”

Olivia doubted such a claim
was true; but once Clara set her mind to something there was no arguing. She
gave a shrug and fell into step. 

With window shopping in
first one place then another, it took almost two hours to reach the Pancake
House. And, when they finally got there, Clara told the hostess they were in no
particular hurry and would wait for an available booth.

“I’ve a table, right now,”
the hostess said. 

Clara shook her head. “We’ll
wait,” she replied, then she stood there eyeing the overhead clock and
rat-tat-tatting her foot like a jackhammer.

Twenty minutes later the
hostess said she had a booth ready for them.  “Not there,” Clara replied
wriggling her finger toward the back of the room, “why, that booth is way too
close to the kitchen. We’ll wait for the next one.”

“But…” Olivia stammered.

“Trust me,” Clara insisted,
and waved the hostess away.

With the subsequent refusal
of two more unsuitably situated booths, they didn’t even glance at a menu until
eleven o’clock and when they finally did, Clara flip-flopped for fifteen
minutes, deciding whether to have pancakes with blueberry syrup or strawberries
and whipped cream. 

“Either sounds good to me,”
Olivia said.

Clara finally settled on the
strawberries. When the pancakes were set in front of her she cut them into tiny
pieces and ate so slowly you could have believed she’d fallen asleep between
bites. Halfway through, she indicated that maybe the blueberry syrup would have
been better after all, so she ordered a stack of those and did exactly the same
thing. When she finished the blueberry pancakes, she ordered coffee and sipped
it so slowly it became ice cold; then she ordered another cup. In all that
time, she never mentioned a word about Charlie or the disposal of his
belongings.

“Well,” Olivia, growing
restless, sighed, “I suppose we should start home.”

Clara delayed for yet
another half-hour, saying she’d probably have to visit the ladies lounge
momentarily and then on the walk home, she slowed her steps to a snail’s pace. 

“Is something wrong?” Olivia
asked. 

Clara hesitated for a long
time then stopped dead in her tracks, her head cocked and her foot twitching.
“How would you feel if you walked back into the apartment and found all of
Charlie’s things gone?” she asked apprehensively.

“I don’t know,” Olivia
sighed. “The bits and pieces of Charlie are like a bouquet of roses—I look at
them and see a world of sweetness and beauty; but, when I try to hold onto
them, the thorns rip me to pieces.”

“I went through the very
same heartache after Henry died.”

“Henry?” Olivia never
pictured Clara as a widow. She was someone who wore bright colored dresses and
laughed at most anything, a person who could turn the simplest get together
into a party. “Henry?” Olivia repeated quizzically, “…he was your husband?”  

Clara nodded, “Yes indeed,
of twenty-eight years.” She began walking again, this time at bit faster pace.

Olivia slipped into the same
stride. “I never would have guessed,” she said. “I mean, now you seem to be so
happy, so settled in your life. When did he…”

“Fourteen years ago.”

“Oh my,” Olivia could feel
the pain of separation twisting in her heart. “How,” she asked, “did you handle
such a loss?”

“Pretty much the same as you;
I hid in my apartment and cried till my eyes were so swollen I couldn’t see
straight. I quit eating and got so skinny I looked like—”

 “Skinny? You?”

“Yeah,” Clara laughed, “…hard
to believe, huh?”

“It’s just that now, you’re
so…”

“You’d better not say fat,”
Clara warned.

“No,” Olivia answered, “not
fat, but robust and full of life.”

“It’s because of Martha Cunningham;
she’s the one I have to thank. I was just like you, maybe sorrier even than
you. I used to go to bed and sleep with a pair of Henry’s pajamas stretched out
alongside of me, pretending, I suppose, he was still in them. But one day after
I’d gone to work, I was still working at the insurance company then, dear sweet
Martha came into my apartment and cleared out every last trace of Henry.  All
except the pictures of course, she knew I’d want to keep those.”

“Were you furious with her?”

“At first I was; but given a
bit of time, I started to realize that although I’d loved Henry in life, I
wasn’t doing him a bit of good wherever he’d gone to. And, I was doing myself
an awful lot of harm. Once I came to that understanding, my life changed.”

“But,” Olivia said haltingly,
“She just threw Henry’s belongings in the trash can?”

Clara laughed, and a soft
look of remembering settled around her eyes. “At first that’s what she told me.
But once I got over the hurting, she confessed there were eleven boxes stored
in the basement and I could do with them as I wanted.”

“Eleven?” Olivia gasped,
knowing the unluckiness of such a number and figuring the story would now take
a hateful turn.

“Eleven,” Clara nodded. “I
loaded them into my car and took them over to the Old Sailors Home. Let me tell
you, those men were truly glad to have such nice things. Why, they thanked me
seven ways till Sunday.”

“Eleven, huh?” Olivia
mumbled as Clara turned to open the lobby door. “And nothing bad happened?”

“Just the opposite; once I
quit tormenting myself with those sorrowful memories, I started enjoying life
again. Oh, I still did plenty of thinking about Henry, but I’d think about the
good times we had instead of wallowing in my misery and wishing I was dead
too.”

“You
sure
it was
eleven cartons?”

“Yes, eleven. But never mind
about the number of cartons, there’s a more important reason for me telling you
this story.” Olivia unlocked the apartment door as Clara continued to speak. “I
never forgot what Martha did for me and I hope you’ll feel the same about what
we’ve done here today.”

“What we’ve done today?”
Olivia said with a bewildered expression.

“Not me and you,” Clara
explained, “…it was the girls—Maggie Cooper, Peggy, Norma, Donna—they’re a
bunch of women who want to be your friends. We’re anxious to see you get on
with your life.”

“What…” As soon as Olivia
stepped into the living room she noticed a different smell—not the odor of
stale tobacco, but lavender, or lilacs, hyacinth maybe. Her clothes were gone
from the sofa, the club chair with a seat cushion squished into the shape of
Charlie’s behind was also missing; the pipes, ashtrays, stacks and stacks of
magazines—gone. Uncertain of whether to scream, cry, or double over in a fit of
hysterics, she walked through to the kitchen—gone was the wall calendar with
pictures of scantily clad girls pumping gasoline; in its place a brand new
calendar with February featuring a bouquet of red roses.