Imaginary Men (12 page)

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Authors: Enid Shomer

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors), #Literary Collections, #Literary Criticism, #test

BOOK: Imaginary Men
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Page 73
said we'd get our checks in ten days. "What about the sentencing?" I asked. "The judge takes care of that. You're finished," he said.
At home, I told Stan about the case. He said I should get it off my mind. "The trees," he said. "Think about the trees."
But I kept thinking of Elvis Thornberry and Elvis, Jr. Two weeks later I phoned the judge's chambers. "He got life," his secretary told me. "He was a convicted felon in Kentucky and Tennessee, but they couldn't tell you that."
"So he'll be there for as long as he lives?" I felt relieved.
"Oh no," she said, after putting me on hold. "Legally, he's eligible for parole in seven years, but His Honor recommended no hearings for at least fifteen."
Good, I thought. Maybe by then I'll have forgotten his name and his face. I turned to the latest citrus grower's bulletin which reviews the major threats to citrus: hard freeze, Medfly, canker,
Phytophthora
foot and root rot, orange dog, and tristeza, the only incurable virus. It attacks the bud union, the graft, the scion.
 
Page 74
Imaginary Men
Momma is trying on a pair of Sears 440 running shoes. The catalog clerk took her driver's license as collateral, and now she sits in the anteroom to the Sears portrait studio, studying her feet.
"I'd hardly call this powder blue," she says to Diane, her daughter who is in the process of getting a divorce. "More like aquamarine." Momma gets up and walks around in the orthopedically designed sneakers. She stands on one foot, then the other, like a marsh bird. "They're still too narrow,'' she says, out of breath. "I'll have to reorder the double E's."
A couple wheeling a stroller comes through the heavy brown drape
 
Page 75
at the studio entrance. "What a darling baby," Momma coos. Behind the couple is the photographer, a young woman heavily made-up and perfumed, wearing what Diane calls the "working woman's uniform"a dress, panty hose, and heels. Diane prefers pants, even though she has nice legs.
"I'm sure we got at least one good one," the photographer says, handing the couple a receipt.
"Did you get one with Timmy looking straight ahead?" the young mother asks.
"Well, I think so." The photographer fidgets with her appointment book.
"He's going to have his eyes operated on next month," the father announces. "Didn't you notice he was cross-eyed?"
"I wondered what that was," the photographer admits. "His eyes did move around a lot. He seems so young for surgery."
"The doctor says it's common to operate at nine months," the mother recites. "He won't even have to spend the night."
"It's not a serious operation," the father adds, slipping his arm around his wife. "They do about three a month."
The photographer smiles. "Your pictures will be ready in two weeks."
Momma stuffs the shoes into their box with the accompanying brochure,
Relaxing Adductor Muscles
. "It's as complicated as buying a washing machine," she mutters. The couple, bracketed together at the waist, makes a slow right-hand turn at the cash register and heads toward the exit.
In the parking lot, Momma hooks her arm in Diane's. "I still think Joe ought to have a second chance."
Diane's stomach tightens at the sound of his name. The night four months earlier when Joe confessed is etched into her mind like a TV commercial. Now it plays again.
"I have to talk to you," Joe had said, stroking her arm. She remembers putting her arms around his neck. "Here or in the bedroom?" She nibbled his ear.
"It's not that." He unwrapped her arms. "I'm leaving."
"Do you need something from the store?" Diane glanced at the wipe-clean memo board they used for grocery lists.
Lunch bags. Oranges
.
 
Page 76
"No. I mean you. I'm leaving you. I'm in love with Maryanne Snyder."
The warm sensation of anger radiates again through Diane's body as she walks across the parking lot. She thinks about the men she refused over the last nine years. Some were tempting, like the one she met in Norfolk when she went to her cousin's wedding without Joe. If Diane had gone to his hotel room that night she might not be so furious now with Joe. She regrets allshe counts fourof the lost opportunities for romance. And she would never have picked someone Joe knew!
Diane retrieves the car keys from her large pocketbook, but Momma has strayed to a nearby pickup truckthe couple with the baby. Diane hurries over just in time to hear her saying, "Isn't this the baby who's going to have surgery?"
Diane has watched her mother strike up conversations with many strangers over the years. "Here you are," she says. Momma ignores her. Diane is anxious to get home to Gerald, her eight-year-old, who otherwise will stay up to watch "The A-Team."
The couple is happy to show off the baby despite his wandering eyes. "See?" the woman shows Momma, "how they move in and out? Sometimes they're perfectly straight, but other times both eyes turn right in to his nose."
"It's a very common defect." Momma chucks the baby under the chin. "My younger brother had it, and that was fifty-two years ago." Diane nearly drops her keys. Momma doesn't have a brother.
"He was as cross-eyed as a chicken," Momma says. The couple huddles closer as if they're getting a second medical opinion.
"Did the operation work?" the woman asks. "The doctor said the surgery will make it possible for him to see straight, but it won't automatically fix his eyes."
"My brother never had another problem after his surgery," Momma assures them.
"I'm so relieved to hear that." The mother smooths the baby's rompers over his bottom.
Momma is just hitting her stride. "I remember them saying it was just a weakness in the muscle."
"Actually," the father corrects her, "the doctor said the muscles are too tight."
 
Page 77
"Yes, well. My brother
has
worn glasses all of his life. But I'm not sure it's related to the crossed eyes."
"You know," the woman confides, "they say it's safe and all, but it really helps to meet someone who's been through it."
"Don't you waste another minute worrying." Momma turns to go. "My brother had it fifty years ago and it worked and he's just fine."
"Thanks a million," the woman calls out. Diane watches the couple load the stroller into the truck. They're smiling. She waits until she and Momma are out of earshot.
"How could you lie like that?" Diane asks.
"They looked so troubled," Momma says. Diane doesn't say anything. She is thinking how simple life would be if you could just lie. Sometimes she wishes Joe had lied and never told her about Mary-anne Snyder.
"Besides, I read all about it in
Redbook
. Everything I said was true to the best of my recollection." She pauses to blow her nose. "Except the part about the brother."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Diane puts Gerald to bed halfway through "The A-Team." Momma answers the telephone. "Alice is coming over," she tells Diane. "She just had a phone call from Joe."
Diane plugs in the coffeemaker because Alice always likes a cup. She loads the day's accumulation into the dishwasher, giving each dish a halfhearted scrub before placing it in the rack. She and Alice have discussed men and life in general since high school. They spend hours on the telephone analyzing the people they know and working on their female consciousness. Momma is what they call "another wasted woman." Diane and Alice define this as anyone born before 1958 or anyone whose female consciousness hasn't been raised. Most of the women they know have had their consciousnesses raised for them by unfaithful husbands, divorce, single-patenting, and humdrum jobs. Alice has been divorced for three years. "It isn't all negative," Alice told her. "I don't have to worry about what to make for dinner anymore. Plus I lost a ton."
Momma answers the door. Alice throws her purse onto a chair and hurries to the kitchen. "Guess who I just had a heart-to-heart with?"
 
Page 78
"I give up," Diane says, setting spoons around the table.
"He wants you to take him back."
"I knew it!" Momma says. "What did I tell you, Diane?"
Diane had heard that Maryanne dumped Joe after two months and that he's living alone in a trailer on the edge of town. She had driven by a few times during her lunch hour. She'd felt twinges of sadness at the sight of his laundry stiffening on the line and the dented mailbox with the broken flap hanging down like the tongue of a thirsty dog. But she isn't willing to be anybody's second choice. And she doesn't like the idea of him slinking back with his tail between his legs. That wasn't the Joe she had married.
"I'm not taking sides." Alice lights a cigarette. "Just reporting the news."
"This isn't a natural disaster," Diane says. "I don't need Peter Jennings. He could call me himself."
"There's a lot to be said for hanging on to old problems instead of trading them for new ones." Momma stands behind Diane and strokes her hair. "You still love Joe, don't you?"
Diane thinks about it. "Love's easy. It's the living together that's hard."
"He wants to move back and go for counseling. Can you believe it?" Alice asks Momma.
"Couldn't you just talk to him?" Momma rests both hands lightly on Diane's shoulders.
"Sure," Diane whispers. She and Joe have been perfectly civilized every time they've been together since he left. The problem is that afterward something strange, beyond her control, happens, usually when she's getting ready for bed. She imagines he's watching her as she moves through the quiet upstairs rooms. She pretends he's small enough to squeeze under the bed or thin enough to hide behind the door. In the hallway she invents a hidden camera like the one at the Sun Bank. Sometimes she finds herself pointing her toe in an alluring way as she peels off her hose or stroking her neck too long as she applies moondrop lotion, almost as if her hands had become Joe's.
"He's basically a good man, you know." Momma pours more coffee.
"He sounds genuinely miserable," Alice adds, "not that I'm defending him."
 
Page 79
"I'm sure the experience has changed him," Momma says.
Alice speaks into her upraised cup. "He said to tell you he'll be by tomorrow at 5:30."
"Have you ever thought of joining the diplomatic corps?" Diane asks Alice.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Momma calls Diane at work the next day to check on her. Diane promises she'll listen to Joe. She remembers all the comfort and advice Momma. gave her when she was growing upwhat to wear on dates, how to handle her first job interviewand wonders now if Momma got all that from ladies' magazines, too.
Joe, always punctual, rings the doorbell at 5:30. Considerate, Diane thinks. She knows he still has a house key, and he knows she never bothered to change the locks, even though the legal clinic recommended it. Joe brings a grocery bag full of goodies for her and Geraldan econo-pak of Juicy Fruit gum, three cantaloupes for her perpetual diet, and a couple of frozen pizzas.
"Gerald here?" he asks, neatly folding the bag.
"No, he's sleeping at Billy's tonight." Diane grips the countertop as she leans against it.
"Mind if I make myself a cup of coffee?"
Diane stares at the refrigerator as he putters at the sink. A butterfly magnet holds a picture of suffragettes marching down Park Avenue. Above it is a photo of a mule standing in a kitchen full of overturned garbage with the caption, Some Days Nothing Goes Right. A gift from Momma.
Joe sits down at the table and stirs powdered creamer into his coffee. "I'd like to come back," he says. "Do you want a cup? I should have asked . . ." His spoon clinks against the saucer.
"How do I know there won't be another Maryanne?"
He thinks about it for a long time, rotating the cup in its saucer with one beefy finger. This unsettles Diane, who is used to the old Joe who had a quick answer for every question. Finally, he says, "I can only tell you that I'm not looking for another Maryanne. Before," he adds, "I was looking."

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