Leftovers: A Novel (4 page)

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Babs did a double take and then the woman at the end of the bar laughed even louder. Babs took her glasses out of her purse and slowly walked down to the far side of the lounge trying to get a good look at the couple.

The woman laughed again seductively as she and the cop huddled together. “Show me another,” she cooed.

Babs worked her way through the maze of patrons drinking at tables as she moved closer but all she could see were the man’s hands. He slipped a cigarette into his left fist, lit end first.

“Oh no!” squealed the woman.

He squeezed his hand and she gasped. He squeezed it harder and smoke drifted upwards. Suddenly he opened his fist, the cigarette was extinguished and his hand had not suffered.

His female friend applauded. “How did you do it?”

“I need my reward first,” the policeman said.

“As long as you have more tricks up your sleeve.”

They separated as the woman got up off her barstool and that’s when Babs’ jaw dropped. Eleanor Gates sat upon Paul Hayes’ lap and kissed him passionately.

Babs’ hands flew to her mouth.
Paul’s under pressure? I’d say about a 110 pounds worth.
She grabbed the large cocktail menu off of a table and hid her face behind it while Paul and Eleanor continued to kiss, oblivious to the world.

Babs rushed back to the front of the bar, threw the menu down and made a beeline for the exit.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” the bartender said.

“Mademoiselle!” she shouted as she left.

Outside of the restaurant Babs ran to her lime green second hand Ford sedan. She eyed the backseat, which was full of Tupperware products and then checked her wristwatch. She knew Vivian’s doctor’s office was on the west side of town but the Tupperware party was on the complete opposite. She jumped into her car and paused for a moment having to make a decision. She shifted into forward and took a fast right out of the parking lot.

Vivian sat nervously opposite three very pregnant women in her gynecologist’s waiting room. The doctor was extremely behind in schedule.

“My husband just looks at me and I get pregnant,” said the one heaviest with child of the three.

Vivian picked up that week’s copy of
Life Magazine
featuring Judy Garland on the cover as Vicki Lester in the movie
A Star Is Born
.

The second woman rubbed her swollen belly and laughed. “I think it’s something in the water.”

Vivian pulled the magazine up in front of her face and flipped through pages pretending to be fascinated by the ads for low riding Studebakers, Blue Bonnet Margarine and Audrey Meadows endorsing O’Brien’s Liquid Velvet wall paint.

The third spoke up and declared, “Whoever said cheaper by the dozen oughta be shot! I’m getting my tubes tied after this one.”

Suddenly the room was quiet. Vivian peeked out over the top of the magazine and all three were staring at her. She gently touched her non-existent baby bump.

“Um, this is my first.”

The nurse entered, rescuing Vivian. “Doctor Moody will see you now, Mrs. Hayes.”

•  •  •

As Vivian zipped up her dress in the doctor’s examining room she noticed a poster advertising condensed milk. A young woman was happily bottle-feeding her newborn child as the ad explained:

Why slow down your busy life breastfeeding when baby can be artificially fed?

Evaporated canned milk with corn syrup and limewater.

CONDENSED MILK makes mother’s and baby’s life HAPPIER and HEALTHIER!

Vivian found the baby’s face familiar and then remembered the first doll her father had given to her as a young child. Unfortunately, it was a short life, for the doll that is. The moment Vivian’s mother discovered it she had Maid 1 toss it away.

But knowing of his daughter’s love of dolls and trying to quell his guilt over spending more time at the mills than he was at home, Mr. Lawson secretly supplied his daughter with an over abundance of them. Vivian hid them in an almost inaccessible eve in the attic over the Maid’s quarters. And only when her mother was dining at the club or out for a game of tennis and the Maids weren’t in their rooms, would Vivian run up to the attic and play with the dolls, doting over them for as long as she could.

She was obsessed with the need to mother and she knew why. Vivian’s intense desire to have children and shower them with love was her attempt to heal her own personal wounds and offer a child what she never had, tenderness and nurturing.

Nervous at how long it was taking for Doctor Moody to return, Vivian started to pick away at a hangnail. She studied the poster for artificial feeding and decided it wouldn’t be the right route for her. The doctor finally entered the room reading Vivian’s chart and coughing while a cigarette dangled from his lips.

“The test results came back, Vivian.”

“Did the rabbit die?” she asked sarcastically.

His dangerously long ash fell ominously onto the examining table. “I’m afraid not.”

“But Doctor, I haven’t had my period and I’m like clockwork.”

He held out his pack of cigarettes offering one to her. She shook her head, but he insisted. “It will calm your nerves.”

She pulled one out and he lit it for her.

“Vivian, the records indicate you’ve lost more weight. Have you been eating?”

“Well, not yet today but . . . ”

“Hmmm.”

“What does ‘hmmm’ mean?”

“The problem may not be you. We need to check your husband’s sperm count.”

Vivian frowned. “How do you do that? With a blood test?”

Doctor Moody actually chuckled. “No dear, he . . . supplies us with a . . . sample.”

She took a puff of her cigarette and then realized what he was alluding to. “Oh, um, no. I don’t think he . . . ah, that’s not an option.”

“Go home. Talk to him.” Dr. Moody then took a small bottle out of the medicine cabinet. “You need to relax Vivian if you want to get pregnant. When jittery, take one of these.”

She looked at him, worried.

“Trust me,” he said as another ash toppled from his cigarette and landed on his potbelly.

•  •  •

Babs regretted her decision to go to the Tupperware party instead of running over to Doctor Moody’s. Still at the gathering, she took a quick moment to call Vivian from the kitchen of the hostess’s home in hopes that she could reach her. She frantically dialed her number while the women out in the living room chirped away.

“Burp it again!” shouted one guest.

Babs looked back towards them nervously. “Pick up, Viv. Pick up.” She let it ring a few more times and then hung up the phone.

“Sit on it!” screamed another woman from the living room.

There was a moment and then Babs registered what the woman had said. She made a frightened face and ran out of the kitchen.

•  •  •

Later that afternoon Vivian stood before a small three-pound prime rib sitting in a roasting pan on top of the Wedgewood. Intimidated, she studied her opened cookbook once again. “Preheat oven to 500.” She looked at the dial on the oven. “Hmm, it only goes to 450.” She looked back at the recipe. “Roast for 15 minutes then reduce to 325 and cook 15 to 17 minutes per pound for medium rare.” Vivian gulped. Math was never her strong suit.

She glanced up at the wall clock and realized it was just after four. She guessed Paul should be home by 5:30 P.M., which would give the roast plenty of time to be done and for them to enjoy a drink and some hors d'oeuvres before they had dinner. She tentatively opened the oven, shoved the roast in and slammed the door shut as if the meat was going to jump back out at her. Having accomplished that much she wiped her hands together like she had won this round, poured a glass of wine and headed upstairs.

Vivian was certain that the anniversary dinner she was surprising Paul with was going to make-up for the disastrous breakfast. She walked into her bedroom and fumbled, unbuttoning her dress. She held out one hand and noticed it shaking.
I think this qualifies as jittery.

She grabbed her handbag and pulled out Doctor Moody’s bottle of pills. Vivian entered the bathroom, popped one into her mouth and washed it down with the wine. And with a little extra time on her hands, she drew herself a well-deserved bubble bath.

•  •  •

Out to the world, it was Vivian’s own snore that woke her up in the tub. Surprised that she hadn’t drowned, she managed to get out of the now chilly bath feeling as though she had consumed the entire bottle of wine.

“What the hell was in that pill?”

She grabbed the bottle and all it said on it was:

• Moody •

Vivian wrapped herself in a towel and sat down at her vanity. She focused on her face but was literally seeing double. She picked up an eyebrow pencil and although her hands were no longer shaking, they also weren’t obeying her commands. She drew a thin brown line, trying to arch it over her left eye but it was like the hand had a life of its own and it veered off towards her ear.

“Damn.”

She smudged the end off and tried doing the right brow but this time her arched line went up a little too high creating a surprised look. She smeared some brownish eye shadow onto her lids and then tried her best with black eyeliner and mascara. Vivian quickly rouged her cheeks, applied a layer of red lipstick and then took a breath. She gazed into the mirror and what stared back at her looked like a startled circus raccoon.

Suddenly she perked up and sniffed the air.

“Oh no,” she slurred. “The roast!” She could smell it burning.

She stumbled out of the bathroom in her towel and grabbed the staircase railing for support as she almost tripped running down it.

Vivian spun around into the kitchen and discovered it was engulfed in smoke. She opened the oven door causing more to billow out into her face. Coughing, she turned off the Wedgewood, grabbed two potholders, dragged the roast out of the oven and threw it up onto the top of the stove.

“Darn it!”

Still wrapped in just a towel and barefoot she picked up the charred beyond recognition smoldering pan of meat and carried it to the back kitchen door and hip checked it open. She managed to slip through but the door slammed shut behind her.

Vivian felt water, stopped and looked up to the sky. “So
now
it decides to rain?”

The droplets made the roast sizzle and pop in the hot pan as she ran over to the trashcan. She kicked it knocking the lid off and dumped the roast in. Just faintly she could hear the phone ringing in the house as the light rain began to pour.

“Shoot!”

She ran to the back door and tried to open it but it had self-locked behind her. Vivian dropped the pan, tightened the towel around her body and then scurried down the drive to the front of the house.

“Ow, ooh, eeh, ouch!” she cried as she stepped on pebbles and stones.

She flew around the corner of the house, up the cracked cement walkway, which had now turned into a river of water and dirt and grabbed the front doorknob. She turned it and nothing happened. She grasped onto it harder, turned it again and butted her shoulder into the door and still, it didn’t budge.

“Damn it!”

The heavens opened up and the rain became torrential. To the right of the front door was a solid picture window, but to the left, the dining room window had two, pane over pane sliders. She stood on her tippy-toes and strained to open the first one but it was locked. She tried the second one and it too was locked. Just then a car drove by the house and when its headlights hit Vivian, she spun around as if she were in a police lineup and screamed.

Desperate to get into the house, she ran back along the drive and noticed the kitchen window above the sink was ajar but too high for her to reach. She made her way over to the side of the garage and dragged back a huge wooden ladder. At this point her feet and legs were covered in mud as the kitchen phone continued to ring.

Vivian lifted one end of the ladder and banged it up against the house next to the window. She wiped her soaked and stringy hair away from her face and climbed the rungs. She managed to push the small window open wider, grabbed onto the sill and shimmied her body in.

Inside, she had to worm her way across the sink of dirty dishes, pots and pans but her towel was caught on the ladder. She fell to the floor stark naked with the phone still ringing.

“Ahhh,” she squealed.

Vivian got to her feet and grabbed a potholder to cover her crotch and then realized how ridiculous that was considering she was completely alone in the house. She threw it down as the phone rang once more. She ran to the kitchen extension and picked it up.

“Hello?” she answered completely out of breath. “Hello!”

All she heard was a dial tone. She dropped the receiver and slid down the kitchen wall next to the open oven. Exhausted, scraped and bruised, naked and drugged, and with her make-up running, Vivian looked like a second rate Hollywood starlet starring in a B-horror movie called
The Wedgewood.