Going Away Shoes (7 page)

The disagreements. The grievances. They aren’t sudden. They sound so trite and yet there they are. Irreconcilable differences.
I envy the people with something big to tell. How wonderful it would be to say:
Yes, I walked in on him having sex with the babysitter. That is what made THAT night different from all others. Yes, he had a cocaine habit and snorted up all the money for college. He beat me and I had two broken arms and now wear dentures
. Black and white. Dead or alive. Instead you say,
We’re just too different, too far apart
.

Now I watch Gretchen driving away with the promise that she will check on me later, that, if needed, she will definitely call and cancel the evening on my behalf. Mr. M. Morris Settle will be here any minute. He said he first needed to run to the store for apple cider. I’m watching the window while sitting at my kitchen table with a pile of Christmas paper and ribbons, wrapping things that are easily adaptable for the exes should someone hand me a gift: nice bottle of wine, soaps, tea towels, chocolates. Charles is standing there watching me, that glass of chocolate milk still in his hand. He keeps dipping a finger in and dousing out the plagues —clearly the highlight of any Passover Seder. “Toads and boils and blood and lice.” He waits for me to screech and say, “Ooh, yuk.”

“Scabs and poop.” He douses again and I can’t help but laugh.

“Ooh, scabs and crap,” I say, and his eyes widen in delight. “Snot and pee and pus and vomit.” He screams with laughter and then runs off to tell his brother.

Mr. M. Morris Settle
is tall and lanky with a shock of white hair he repeatedly smoothes back in a way that has left little flips like wings over each ear. He doesn’t look like someone dressed for this kind of work. He’s in khakis with crisp pressed pleats, a white dress shirt, and a bright green and red bolo.

He introduces himself with a firm handshake and then stands, hands on his hips as he tilts back his head and sniffs the air. “Oh yeah,” he says. “We’re smelling something all right.” He looks at me and winks. “But I’ve smelled worse, honey. I sure have smelled worse.”

“Thanks for coming on such short notice.” Without warning my eyes fill with tears, and it makes me furious, like when I cry over a long-distance commercial or some movie designed to yank my chain. “I . . .” I reach my hands up, stalling so I don’t cry, floundering for words.

“And that’s just why I’m here,” he says. “No need to say a word. If my Edie called anybody sounding that way, I’d like to think she’d get everything she needed just like that,” he snaps his fingers and reaches in the passenger side of his truck for a crowbar. The truck is enormous with a huge tube snaked around the back. “No sir, I do believe you reap what you sow.” He goes over to the rectangle of grass, steps hard with one foot as he feels around. Then he starts sinking the crow bar until there is a clanking sound. He whistles the whole while he goes back and forth —“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Joy to the World.” He pulls some
big rubber boots over his dress shoes and starts carefully digging away the grass and setting it off to the side.

“Folks say I can come and go out of a yard and they don’t even know I’ve been there.” He reaches and pulls off the grate and sets it aside. “Nice work. Don’t see a thing wrong down here.” He calls me over and I squat there beside him as we peer down into the tomblike hole, brown sludge at the bottom.

“Beautiful sight in my line of work,” he says and laughs. “The eye of the beholder. Yeah, you got a fine system. Redone since I was last here. Ain’t even necessary to pump but I will and then we’ll have a schedule.”

“But the smell.”

“That’s a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shields his eyes and points at a squat silver cap on my roof. “Is that a bathroom right there?”

I nod, immediately picturing the bathroom I had all but lifted from the other house, the walls painted a bright blue like a pool, and big shiny goldfish on the shower curtain. I had lifted their bedrooms as well, attempting to make the transition as easy as possible, posters placed the same distance from the bed so that when they settled in at night there was the comfort of what they knew and recognized. SpongeBob SquarePants and World Wrestling Entertainment.

“You ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time?” he asks.

“Oh yeah.”

“Well, that’s your vent, and when your heat comes on in the house, then the air in all the vents is fighting to get out.” He does his hands up and down and back and forth as if in battle. “Gotta go somewhere —and if you’re standing here, and the wind is blowing just right over your roof and near that vent, poof, there you go.”

“Wrong place at the wrong time,” I echo.

“Story of my life.” He looks at me and smiles, lines wrinkling around his eyes. “Or was. Before Edie. I’d jump down there and swim in that mess if I needed to for her. Anything at all, I’d do it.” He pauses to make sure I’m listening. “I did
not
feel that way about Pamela.” He doesn’t even give me a chance to ask who Pamela is. “First wife,” he whispers, as if she is somewhere nearby. “Left me right after that Christmas the tree fell. Never thought I’d be divorced and then I was. Grown kids. House paid off. I’m looking to retirement and the golden years and then boom.” He stares, blue eyes fixed on mine in a way that makes it impossible to look elsewhere. There are bells on his bolo and he jingles when he shakes his head to emphasize his disbelief of his experience. His initials are embroidered on the pocket of his shirt and he wears a button that says believe.
In what?
I want to ask, but he continues without missing a beat. “I felt bad like I done wrong and I told people I felt I’d done wrong and friends finally said, Morris, that woman will never be satisfied. You did as much as a human could do. You did more than most humans would do,
trying to make her feel happy, but the truth is you can’t take a miserable person and turn them happy so you ought to be glad she went on and left you. It’s a blessing, a gift. Flush her, man.” He laughs. “That’s what this one friend of mine says to me over and over —“flush her, man” —he’s got a good sense of humor about my business, always has, like he’s always saying to me at a card game —or used to say, since now that I got Edie I don’t like late nights out playing cards, and those fellas can’t stand that, can’t stand I’m so happy —but he used to always say, ‘A flush beats a full house don’t it, Morris?’ ” He waits as if to let me catch up on his story, but then I realize he’s still mulling over my system, shining his light from one dark corner to the next. “Run in there and give her a flush.”

“Now? The one upstairs?”

“Yeah sure. Let’s just add some gravy to the stew.” I stand and nod. “Yeah, they all said it was a blessing, but I couldn’t listen real good at the time. Part of it was I was thinking,
If it’s such a blessing, why didn’t somebody tell me how bad it was?
I was unhappy and didn’t even know how much. You get used to the bad and don’t know what you’re missing. Like if you got used to the smell there you’d start to forget what smells good in this world. I can fix that with a length of pole, easy job. My kids took it better than I did. They weren’t surprised either, and I said,
Well hell, what kind of idiot am I? Why couldn’t I see what everybody else was seeing so easy?
”

I pause at the door to wait for him to finish. I can hear the
television going full blast in the other room. I can see chocolate milk and Cocoa Puffs all over the kitchen counter.

“Go on, now,” he motions. “Go flush, and when you get back I’ll tell you about those trashy people who used to live here.”

“I just got divorced,” I say and step in before he can respond. I hear the heat come on and imagine a cloud of air traveling through the pipes up to the roof and open sky. I pass through the small family room, where Charles is about to doze off with his head on Beau’s back. Michael is drawing cars, page after page of cars, while watching cartoons and making racing noises. Upstairs I tiptoe as if it is night and they are both in bed sleeping, as if I am viewing my life from some distant place. I can see Mr. Settle still squatting by the opening. I can tell he’s still singing, hands patting his thighs. He looks up at the window and smiles though I know he can’t see me there through the tilted blinds. I flush and then hurry back down, suddenly interested in what happens at the other end as well as hearing the rest of his story, eager to reenter my life.

“Perfect,” he says and motions for me to squat there beside him again. “That smell ain’t new. You just noticed it is all. I’ll get you a length of pipe and swing by after the holidays, then it’ll be high enough to blow away, just the birds will smell it.” I nod, mesmerized by his voice and the swirl of brown water down below. “Still, let’s pump it out —pump out the old and bring in the new.”

“There you go now,” he says when I laugh, and he starts unwrapping the big hose and pulls it over to the hole. “I believe
there’s nothing like a good hard laugh.” Within minutes that tube springs to life, a motor grinding as it sucks the very crap from my life, and he has to talk even louder. “You know, in my line of work you’re reminded that there’s always crap to deal with. I think folks who don’t deal with a little crap at a time forget how, and then they get hit with something big and fall to pieces. A little crap is good for you; it’s like bacteria down there in your septic or, you know, in a fish tank or your innards. That’s my two cents. Chicken soup for the outhouse set.” He laughs and untwists a kink in the big hose. “I felt like such a failure back then.” He shakes his head. “I was hittin’ the sauce pretty hard, sitting and staring into pit after pit like this and thinking,
what a pile of shit
—pardon my French —but then you know what happened?”

“Edie?”

“Ah yeah, Edie —this world’s best and most beautiful natural air freshener. I went to play bridge one night and there she was. Neither of us like bridge much —too much thinking so it messes up the talking. The fella having the gathering finally said, ‘Why don’t you two chatty boxes just go on and leave since you ain’t paying attention to anybody else or the game anyway.’ I don’t even know what all we talked about, just that I hadn’t talked and laughed like that in ages. We went to get us some coffee —we both love our coffee —and she told me that she liked hearing me sing. I guess I’d hummed a little here and there and didn’t even know it. Maybe nervous, you know?”

I nod.

“Know why that was a kind of beautiful thing?” he waits until I shake my head. “I can’t sing a note. Couldn’t sing my way out of a paper sack and here’s this sweet good-looking gal asking for more. Six years since I met Edie. I am seventy-three years old and these have been the best six years of my life.” He leans in close, our shoulders touching as we both continue to stare down —the water level has dropped considerably. “Your life is just beginning,” he nudges me, his arm firm against my own. “You’re still wet behind the ears.” He smells like cedar and Old Spice, and I catch myself with a quick image of him and Edie waking and preparing for this day. Their Christmas tree in its stand, coffee perking, bathroom mirror still steamed over as he ties his bolo and promises to be right back. “Dealing with all this crap right now will make everything better and brighter on down the road.”

I wait, unable to look up, even though I know he’s staring at me. He puts his hand on my back and rests it there a long comfortable minute and then he is up and moving. Edie is waiting, he says. They have stuff to do before the grandkids arrive; they like to go caroling with a group from the neighborhood —he drives his smaller truck, which doesn’t smell like the business, and folks sit there in the back on hay and blankets; Edie sits back there a little bit, but mostly she likes to be there beside him. Then before bed, he and Edie like to sit by the fire and talk. “We both like to
talk,” he laughs. “Edie can outtalk me on a good day but I can hold my own. I know that’s hard to believe but I can.” He pulls and recoils the huge tube. “You’re fine,” he says and points to the rectangle of brown grass that looks just as it did when he arrived. “I believe everything’s fine. Make sure your tree’s in there tight. I wire mine up to the ceiling. Ain’t taking any chances on Edie.” And then he is gone, all the debris of my life sucked away and hauled off in his big silver truck and I am left wondering if he was even for real. When Gretchen calls to get the report, I tell her all about this incredible visit, how I feel the best I have felt in years. I feel alive, hopeful. I want to say that I feel I’ve been visited by an angel, that whoever is in charge of the great beyond would know that I would never believe in white gowns and shiny wings. My angel would never play a harp and sing sweetly on high; no, my angel vacuums crap and bad odors and worries. My angel talks too much and thrives on bad jokes. “He didn’t even bill me,” I say, further proof of the wonder of it all.

“He knows where you live,” she says, desperate to turn the conversation back to what I plan to wear, cook, say at this ridiculous event I’ve planned. “He’ll bill you.” And I am thinking the bill will make it even better, as well as his return to install the pipe to vent leftover bad air when a rush of warmth blows from the furnace. I will love nothing better than to have that vent firmly in place and to know that he is real.

So, what makes
this night different from all other nights?

My tree is wired to a big sturdy hook in the ceiling and Christmas music is playing from three different sources. Clark’s girlfriend has TMJ problems and carpal tunnel syndrome. I have to avoid looking at the boys when she first walks in with little wrist braces and a tight jaw. She, like Clark, is allergic to Beau and to the Christmas tree and to the dust mites. My ex-in-laws are cordial and like their soaps and chocolates. It is a little awkward and formal. It is easier when we all just focus on the boys and listen as they tell what they hope Santa Claus will bring. They have tied felt antlers to Beau’s head and he sits looking at me with those big sad eyes as if pleading for my intervention. We both are eager for the visit to end. When Beau rolls over and quits participating, I fill the silence by saying I like my acrylic cookbook holder that keeps food from splashing on the pages, which is a lie. I told him years ago that I didn’t need or want one of these, that I like how my favorite recipes are coated with necessary ingredients. Challah recipe glazed in dried dough and loose poppy seeds, cranberry bread with red smudges, Russian rye with a sticky molasses corner and little caraway seeds. “Thank you very much,” I say with the practiced clear speech of a ventriloquist, because those words didn’t come from me but from some person far across the years who dreams of clear fresh water just up ahead on the horizon. Yet, I am here, in my own house, awash with everything new. I am so
dipped and bathed and resurrected that I expect to find a puddle on the floor around me.