Twenty-Seven
I keep seeing these people, my best friend tells me.
What people? I ask her. I hold the phone beneath my chin. I am standing in my kitchen, looking down at the sink full of plates. Our house is a hundred years old and there is no dishwasher, except me. My husband heated up something tomato-y before he left for work, and it has crusted across my cooking pots in tough red scabs. I should be able to handle things like this. After all, I have bought an apron. I have a stack of resumés in the other room, waiting for envelopes. I wonder if I can list apron-wearing under skills.
People, she says. When I walk home from work. I see these people.
You walk home from work? I fill up the sink with water. Maybe the mess will disintegrate.
Sure, I walk home from work. I gained five pounds after they opened up that bakery next to the candle shop, remember? With those strawberry things in the puff pastry? I ate twelve last week and my pants don’t fit. So now I walk.
She works in a tiny candle store run by a twice-divorced Russian lady. Her boss has flesh-tone hair and drinks strong, bitter tea from tiny cups. She sometimes reads the tea leaves, shoving her finger down into the cups and frowning with her bulldog face. Not good for you, her boss says. It’s never good. Meanwhile, my friend stands all day long, dipping oiled string into great vats of Technicolor wax. She gets hot and drinks water from the sink.
Okay, so you see these people. What about them? I ask. I pick up a cereal bowl constellated with my husband’s Cheerios. Milk drips over my fingers. Outside, in the street, people move with purpose, in cars and trucks and on foot. They are going places they are meant to be.
They’re deformed, she says. God that sounds bad, but it’s true. Things aren’t there that should be. And it’s only since I’ve been walking home that I’ve seen them. You know that bus stop by the Whole Foods? Near your old apartment?
I’d lived quite near her back when I was single. Our old neighborhood was quiet, nearly suburban by Atlanta standards, mostly full of high-income families and harried students from the nearby medical school. Sometimes I amused myself by imagining what they might unleash.
Are you still there? she asks. The bus stop. Remember it?
I do, I tell her. I put the cereal bowl in the dish drying rack. It isn’t very clean. My everyday dishes, the registry had said. I hadn’t taken it literally.
My best friend says, Well, I was standing there, waiting to cross the street. And this lady comes up, this Indian lady with all these bags from the bakery. And I looked down at the bags and I saw her legs. They were weird looking, and at first I couldn’t figure out why. But then I realized that she didn’t have any knees.
That’s impossible, I say.
She’s angry now. Well, I guess it is possible, since I saw it, she says. There are strange people all over the place, you just forget. You never leave your house.
I decide to let that slide. How could she walk? I ask. I envision tiny, petrified tree trunks, sprouting from the billowing hem of a sunburst sari.
My best friend sighs. How am I supposed to know? she asks. All I saw were calves and feet. She was wearing white Keds and it was like her legs were toilet paper rolls—straight up and down. Lincoln Log legs. And when she got on the bus, it was like seeing the Gingerbread man try to walk. She kicked her feet straight up in this—this goosestep, and I have no idea how she handled the stairs.
Woman, I say.
What?
Gingerbread woman.
Whatever, she says, annoyance tingeing her voice.
I wipe my hands on my apron. I have washed a cereal bowl and a mug. Does this make me a good wife or a bad one? My kitchen, with its metal cabinets and checkered floor, is dirty. My laundry is undone. Our bed is unmade.
She continues: But that’s not the only thing. I saw an old man in a purple turtleneck at the bakery. He had this enormous gray beard, like Santa Claus. But he had no eyes. No eyes at all.
I ask. How can someone have no eyes? Like he was blind, you mean? I fix a third cup of coffee and wander through the house. My dog sleeps near the door. I forgot to mail the bills.
Like there was nothing in his eye sockets, she says. I was eating my strawberry thing and it was blazing hot outside—like when the heat slams you off the pavement hot—and here is this man in a turtleneck with no eyes. Just these puckers, these navels, where eyes should have been.
What did he order? I ask. I peer into the unfinished spare bedroom and realize my husband has forgotten to paint the trim. He forgets so many things.
She sighs into the receiver. What does that matter?
Did people stare at him?
That’s the thing, she says. Everyone was determined not to look. I searched the room, looking at the girl behind the counter—the Asian one, with the good haircut—and the other customers and the guy who makes the strawberry things, but no one looked back at me. They were completely immersed in their work. They had to have seen, though.
Maybe they didn’t care, I say. Maybe they just let him be.
I stare at the front door, the washing machine. A lone sock flops limply from the dryer.
Sure they cared. People care about things like that. But listen—there’s more. The weirdest one was yesterday. Weirder than the turtleneck guy and knees lady by a long shot. I was walking home and I was miserable. My boss had me doing that elderberry order and I stunk like Christmas. I wanted a shower so bad. And I was counting my steps because you need ten thousand a day, you know.
Ten thousand? I say. I imagine people marching off in all directions. Ten thousand leagues; walking so long that you ended up under water, somewhere far from where you started.
Never mind that, she says. I saw it on TV. But I was staring down at my feet, counting my steps. And all of the sudden I see this absolutely gorgeous flower lying there. It’s this tulip, this perfect tulip. I haven’t ever seen one so nice.
What color was it? I decide to sit down in front of the television, though I don’t turn it on. Only housewives watch TV during the day. I am just between. So I sit.
It was red, which has nothing to do with anything. I’m not going to tell you the story if you keep asking me all these questions.
I’m sorry, I tell her. I decide that I can watch TV for ten minutes. After that, I will fold laundry. Do dishes.
Okay, she says. But just listen. So I find this red tulip lying there, and I look up ahead and I see this—this kid walking along with a bouquet. It looks like a kid, anyway. It was hard to tell with the sun in my eyes. So I call out, Hey! You dropped a flower! But the kid doesn’t turn around.
Did you keep it?
Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am? she asks.
I know what that really means: what kind of person are you?
I jogged, she says, so I could give it back. I believe in karma, you know.
I know.
And so I run up the hill and I grab the kid’s shoulder and he startles, almost drops the rest of the flowers. But it’s not a kid. He’s twenty, maybe, and wearing headphones. He’s the size of an eight-year-old but he has stubble and tired eyes.
So what? So he’s small, I tell her. I tune in to CNN. Housewives do not watch this channel. CNN implies a need to know. A belonging.
He wasn’t just small. He had no legs. And before you ask, he had metal prosthetics. I could see them sticking out under his pants, like he was half robot. But that wasn’t the weird part. He was holding that big bunch of tulips with tiny baby arms.
Like stumps or something? I ask. CNN depresses me. The war is illustrated in reds and browns.
Sort of, she says. But different. Like he’d started to have arms, and then stopped. He had baby fingers, like a newborn’s. Like a hot-air parade float, you know? Just tiny arms and teeny digits.
I turn off the TV. But how did he carry the flowers, I ask.
He was just gripping them between his—where his hands would have been. A big bouquet, just about the most gorgeous flowers I’d ever seen, and he was balancing them between the ends of his arms. I held out the flower and I said, Hey, you dropped this. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. He had beautiful black hair and black, black eyes. And he was listening to Motley Crue. I could hear it.
Did he hear you? I ask. I try to imagine this boy.
Oh yeah, he heard me. But he didn’t say anything. And I didn’t know what to do with the flower. I couldn’t hand it to him, you know? He had that bouquet balanced just so. So I stood there in the heat, holding out the flower. And finally, he just opened his mouth.
But why? I can’t help but ask. I leave the couch and look out the window, at the trucks trundling by. My husband will be home in six hours. He adds shape to the day, entering our home like some exotic, using a language of commerce that, in two months, I have forgotten how to speak.
And then she says, What do you mean, why? He wanted me to stick it in his mouth. He opened it really wide, so I knew that was what he wanted. I did it really carefully. He looked like a Spanish dancer with the tulip in his teeth. And then he nodded, just once, and turned and left. I could hear the creak of his metal legs and the Motley Crue and I could see the flower sticking out on either side of his head, see the top of the bouquet like a burst of balloons hovering in front of him. Like he might float away.
So, what about it? I ask her.
That’s what, she says. That’s all.
Oh, I say.
Wasn’t that enough? Tulips, balloons, teeth. You’re a writer. I thought you would like the image.
The television screen reveals nothing. There is no noise, not anywhere. So I say, It was a good story. It’s a lovely image.
What about you? What are you doing? Any job leads?
Sure, I say. Lots. I have my pick.
I decide that I will mail the bills tomorrow. I will take a nap. I will do a dish, maybe two. The resumés will wait for my direction.
The day stretches on and on and on.
