Calling Invisible Women (18 page)

“What article?”

“That’s why I was in the library today. I wrote an article for the paper about the robbery and I forgot to turn it in.” I ran out to the car and got my computer. The case was freezing and I wondered just how cold a computer could be before all your work disappeared.

“Did you have anything to do with the robbery?” Nick asked in a hesitant voice.

“I took the guy’s guns, that was all.”

“Oh, thank God,” Nick said, and closed his eyes. “That’s so much better than you trying to rob the bank.”

A footnote to the afternoon: Ed thought the piece was terrific. The phone rang twelve minutes after I sent it in. He said I could have all nine hundred words. “Send me stuff like this,” he said, “and I’ll put you in the paper every day.”

“There isn’t going to be a bank robbery every day,” I said. “At least I hope there isn’t.”

“But there’s always going to be something,” he said. “Trust me on that.”

And I did.

When Arthur came home that night I thought things were a little stilted, what with Vlad and Nick trying not to look at each other and looking entirely too much at me, and Evie rattling on about cheerleading and how they needed to get back to school tomorrow for practice, and Arthur, in the dark on everything, talking about a mother who refused to have her baby inoculated against polio because she’d read somewhere online that polio had been eradicated. He shook his head. “People can be very, very stupid,” he said to the children. “This is a quality I urge you to avoid in yourselves.”

“I’m working on it,” Nick said. “I’ve had some good guidance.”

“I’ll get the dishes,” Vlad said, standing up and taking my plate.

Evie put down her fork. “That isn’t fair,” she said. “You had to do the dishes last night. Nobody should have to do the dishes two nights in a row.”

“Mom does the dishes every night, you moron,” Nick said to his sister. Vlad stopped and looked at Nick and in return Nick pressed his lips together and nodded his head. He got up from the table and began to fill his hands with plates. “Vlad and I will do the dishes.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Evie said.

“You can do the pots,” Nick said. “Come on. It’s going to be some kind of crazy fun.”

There on the fence between curious and petulant, our daughter finally rose from her chair and hesitantly gathered up the glasses so that she could follow the boys into the kitchen. “That was a first,” Arthur said, the two of us suddenly alone at the table.

“That Vlad’s a good influence,” I said.

“Tell me something,” Arthur said, absently looking back toward the door to the kitchen. “Do you think they’ll ever leave?”

“Vlad just got here, and Evie hasn’t been back any time at all.”

Arthur shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, do you think they’ll ever all leave at the same time?”

“Is this about Nick finding a job?”

Arthur tilted his head from side to side as if trying to fix on the true nature of his question. “Nick will find a job, but then Evie will graduate from college and she won’t find a job. She’ll move home and then she’ll miss Vlad too much and so he’ll move here too, and then Nick will lose his job and Evie will have a baby—”

“What in the world has gotten into you?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” my husband said. “We’ll love this baby. Our first grandchild.”

“Arthur, seriously, did something happen at work today?”

He sighed. “Sometimes I wish we had a little time alone.”

I wished I could reach out and squeeze his hand. I thought of him in his office in front of his computer. I thought of the baby that was sick. I thought of how tired he must be some nights. “The children will grow up and move on and we will miss them terribly,” I said in a voice once used for bedtime stories. “We’ll look back on this conversation with disbelief thinking of how lucky we were to have them around.” I didn’t know if this was true but I hoped it would be true.

“Go on,” he said.

“We’ll miss them, but only when we have the time. We’ll be very busy.”

“Doing what?” Arthur was still looking at the door, as if willing them to stay in the kitchen.

“We’re going to get an old river barge and fix it up ourselves, a big old wooden boat. Then we’re going to take it up the Rhine.” This very cleverly alleviated my problems with sailing and seasickness.

“How do we get it to the Rhine?” Arthur asked. He was smiling now.

“Don’t ask a lot of questions. It spoils the story.” I lowered my voice. “We keep two bicycles on the barge and in the afternoons we tie up the boat and we ride to the little villages and buy bread and wine and cheese and then we have picnics on grassy slopes.” I had worked in the boat and the bikes but I felt that throwing in a plane might tip my hand.

“We’ll write the children postcards and tell them how much we miss them,” Arthur said. “We’ll write to them from the grassy slopes.”

“Exactly.” I was whispering. “But for now I’m going to take this opportunity to call it an early night. It’s felt like a very long day.”

“Music to my ears,” Arthur said, pushing back from the table. “If I don’t go to bed right now I’m going to sleep on the dining room table.”

But when we finally were in bed, the lights off and the door closed against children who were doing God only knew what downstairs, Arthur whispered to me in the darkness, “I had such a powerful feeling about you today. Feeling … that’s not exactly the right word. Maybe it was a premonition, except it wasn’t about something that was going to happen. It was just about you. It was like you were standing in the room with me.”

“Hmm,” I said, because I had no idea what else to say.

Arthur snuggled up behind me, kissed my neck. “It was a visitation. An extremely pleasant visitation. That’s what it was.”

“I’ll try to come more often,” I said, and then, because the door to the bedroom was locked and the children never dreamed that such things happened anyway, I rolled over, suddenly less sleepy than I’d been, and kissed him.

twelve

T
here was a 7:30 meeting at the Sheraton on Tuesday mornings. Usually I didn’t go because it was too tricky to explain where I was off to so early (and you had to get there way before 7:30 if you wanted to get out of your clothes and up to the Magnolia Room on time), but this morning I really needed a meeting. Even if I was only going to sit and listen, I needed to be in the room with invisible women. I told Arthur his mother was having an early bird yoga class.

“Give Mom a kiss for me,” he called out from the shower.

Irene would never mind being my alibi.

•   •   •

I was just rushing, darting into the locker room to take off my clothes, darting down the hall and just making it into the elevator before the doors shut. All I was thinking about was the time, making the meeting, not being late. I had gone two floors before I realized I was standing next to Gilda. She was wearing a blazer and a skirt, which was for Gilda extremely dressed up.

“Gilda?” I touched her shoulder and she jumped.

“Jesus, Clover, you’ve got to stop scaring me.”

My heart was racing. She was looking for me, something was wrong. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” she said. The elevator dinged, fourth floor, and the doors slid open. “I just felt like going to a meeting.”

“What do you mean you felt like going to a meeting? You’re not invisible.”

“In a lot of ways I am,” she said philosophically, taking the lead down the hall toward the Magnolia Room. “My children don’t pay any attention to me. They’re off getting tattoos. My husband is having an affair with his iPhone.”

I took her arm and pulled her aside. “You can’t come.”

“Listen, Clover, you’re not the only person around here who feels in need of a little group support. We’re friends. We do things together. If this is good for you, then it’s good for me, too. Why would you have a problem with that?”

“You know full well why I’d have a problem with it. If you didn’t think I’d have a problem, you would have asked me yesterday and we would have ridden over together. You wouldn’t be sneaking up on me in the elevator.”

“I was in the elevator first,” Gilda said sharply, but then her face softened even though she was looking far over my left shoulder. “Be a pal. Let me come. I want to meet your invisible friends. I promise I won’t embarrass you.”

I looked at Gilda’s watch. I had seen several Kleenex go past us already. “Okay,” I said finally. “It’s a really bad idea but okay. And next time promise me we’ll talk about it first.”

Gilda nodded her head with great solemnity. “Promise.”

We walked in together. I held her hand and held my breath. The invisible women were a friendly bunch, I told myself. A dozen Kleenex turned in our direction. I cleared my throat. “Everybody,” I said, trying to sound bright. “I brought a guest today. This is my friend Gilda.”

There was nothing, not a flutter, not a wave. A floating coffee cup came to rest on the table.

“Come on, guys,” I said, wanting to sound light instead of pleading. “She really wanted to come. She’s my best friend. She’s been incredibly supportive of me.”

“She isn’t invisible,” Jo Ellen said flatly.

Gilda nodded her head. “I know that,” she said.

“This is a meeting for—”

“Invisible women,” Lila said, and her Kleenex went up in gentle greeting. “So what? If she’s a friend of Clover’s—”

“The entire world is for them,” someone said, but I couldn’t figure out who it was. “Can’t we have a single place—”

Gilda turned to me. I was still holding her hand. “This is more complicated than I thought.”

“No it’s not,” Laura Worthington said, raising her Kleenex. “We were visible not that long ago and with any luck we’ll be visible again. If I come back to my old self I don’t want to think I’m going to be drummed out of the meetings.”

“You could always be in the meetings,” Jo Ellen said. “Once invisible, always—” She stopped herself.

We were all still standing there around the Danish table. “I’m sorry,” I said, my heart breaking a little. “I think we should go.”

“Vote!” Alice said, her voice loud and clear. “All in favor of Clover’s friend Gilda being an honorary invisible woman, raise your Kleenex!”

It didn’t happen all at once, but ultimately eleven Kleenex went up. Two stayed down.

“A landslide,” Lila said. “Take a seat.”

“Careful where you sit,” I whispered. “Not on a Kleenex.”

Gilda was pale. She was cutting off the circulation in my fingers. “I want to shoot myself.” Her voice was very quiet.

“I know,” Alice said to her. “But you’ll get over it.”

“Now that we’ve had our excitement for the day,” Jo Ellen said, “does anyone have something they’d like to talk about?”

After an awkward pause, Roberta spoke up. “Hi, I’m Roberta, and I’m an invisible woman.”

“Hi, Roberta!” we said. Gilda joined right in.

“I’ve been invisible for about seven months now and at first I have to say I was pretty depressed. I just stayed in the house all the time. I didn’t feel like I could drive the car. I didn’t want to go to the grocery store. I was fired from my job as a nurse, though really I don’t know if it was because I was invisible or because I was crying all the time. I just felt so embarrassed, like everyone was staring at me and I couldn’t explain what had happened because I still don’t understand it myself.”

“Speaking of which,” Jo Ellen said. “What’s the update on the meeting with the Dexter-White chemist?”

“Could you let her finish talking first?” someone said.

“It’s okay,” Roberta said. “It’s sort of emblematic of what I’m talking about.”

“He keeps changing the date,” Rosemary said. “He says it’s because he’s busy but I think he’s nervous.”

“Well, just be sure to keep on him and give us the updates. Roberta, I’m sorry,” Jo Ellen said. “You were saying.”

Roberta began again. “My husband and my kids didn’t notice I was missing. I’d ask them to pick stuff up for me at the store and they’d do it. I was home all the time and the house was really clean and the food was great and everything was washed and ironed and put away. I brushed the dog a lot. I think they knew that something was different but as far as they were concerned it was better. They were happy, so, you know, end of story.”

“Are you kidding me?” Gilda said. She leaned in the direction of the voice. “That’s horrible. I mean, I know Clover’s family didn’t notice she was missing but I thought it was just them, they’re busy, they’re obtuse, whatever. Are you telling me this sort of willful insensitivity is endemic to the entire situation?”

“Pretty much,” someone said.

Gilda shook her head. We could all see on her face the pain she felt for Roberta, for all of us, and seeing it felt good. Maybe we’d needed one regular woman at the meetings all along. It was so satisfying to have a visual to go along with the story. “Forgive me,” Gilda said. “I’ve interrupted you, and I want to hear your story. What happened next?”

“I had so much time on my hands I started reading the entire paper, the business section, the sports section, the want ads.”

“The want ads!” we all said together.

“And by the way, Clover, great piece about the bank robbery. We were all glad you were okay.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling excited. I hadn’t seen the paper before I left.

“She was great!” Gilda said in a stage whisper.

Roberta went on. “And that’s how I found my way to this group. The first time I came I took the bus. I wore a wig and sunglasses that were so big they would have embarrassed Jackie Onassis. I can hardly believe I was ever that person. Now look at me—I’m talking, I’m naked, and all of it’s thanks to you. The women in this room literally saved my life. And now, because of the great example set by Lila Robinson, I’m back on the job as a nurse. They don’t know it yet but I’m there flushing out IV lines, rubbing people’s feet. It reminds me of why I wanted to be a nurse in the first place. I wanted to help people, not make sure that I was meeting the requirements of the charge nurse. Of course I’d like to get paid again—”