They say that in a moment of crisis your life flashes before your eyes. In Isabelle’s Appetite, the reader experiences a day long flash of a lifetime of reflection and revelation.
This is a life, a marriage, a funeral procession, a walk through a past to ashes and passion. Its pathos is not without humor and its understanding is not without human frailty and misunderstanding.
Isabelle’s Appetite
Quality paperback
200 pages
$13.95
ISBN 1889409-37-5
Sample:
Eggs
“Izz-a-belle!” Ginger exclaimed it as if it were her word for anger. “Izz-a-belle, how could you.” It wasn’t a question. “I’ve always told you never to drink water just before bedtime.”
Isabelle
blushed. She wanted to think of herself
as a grown woman but here she was, confessing at
“Oh, dear,” Ginger exclaimed, as she brought herself to full awareness. “It’s your water. Go get your suitcase. It’s time.”
They had already packed a suitcase. The doctor’s number was next to the phone. Ginger’s purse contained a list of people who should be notified from the hospital, and their numbers. Al’s name was not on that list. If Isabelle wanted to tell him she could, but it was not something Ginger would approve. A man who would leave his young—too young—wife when she was eight months pregnant and had no way to fend for herself… Al was on another of Ginger’s lists. He would have to be told, assuming that he would not ask and that was a reasonable assumption.
“Suzy!” Ginger called, “Oh, she’s already gone.” She said to herself; then, “Izz-a-belle! Hurry up.”
Isabelle had not even had a room to come back to. It should have been her own home, where she could decide who would be forgiven and for what, but that was not to be. Instead, it was her mother she had stood in front of, begging for forgiveness and hoping she would not be turned out. She hated Ginger at that moment and not for the first time.
For a moment, Isabelle went blank. Suitcase? she thought, looking around the room. The room should have seemed familiar by now, but it was still strange. Nothing there belonged to her except the scattered clothing and a few personal items, shoved into carefully closed drawers of neatly dusted dressers. She felt very temporary and a suitcase should have been a natural part of that, a suitcase and a sense of adventure. All she felt was confusion and no suitcase appeared. It was her job to get the suitcase and bring it to the car. She remembered that, but there was nothing about the suitcase itself.
“Come on Isabelle,” Ginger called. “Have the contractions started yet?”
Isabelle had never had contractions before. She was not looking forward to them, but she was not sure she would recognize them. Her back hurt and so did her head. She didn’t think either of those were contractions, but if she answered Ginger wrong, she would be in even more trouble. She pretended not to hear her mother’s question.
Just as she was about to give up on the suitcase—Ginger would not be patient forever—Isabelle saw a corner of it sticking out from behind the door. Was it the right suitcase? How many could there be, she wondered, hoping the answer to that was: One.
It was not very heavy and Isabelle carried it to the door with ease. She was about to say, to her mother’s back as she followed her out the door, that she had the suitcase and everything was ready when she gasped in pain. It was her first contraction. She had no doubt about it.
Ginger heard the loud intake of breath behind her and looked at her watch. “OK, tell me when the next one hits.” Ginger took the suitcase and tossed it in the back seat, while Isabelle, pale and frightened, let herself in the other side.
“The next one?”
Her mother reminded her to fasten her seatbelt and calmly pulled the car out of the driveway. Isabelle was thinking how ordinary it seemed. Maybe Ginger would stop at the store for a loaf of bread. French toast sounded good for breakfast and it was almost breakfast time.
They made it all the way to the hospital, parked the car, and were getting out before the next contraction hit. It was like gravity had suddenly gone wild inside her, pushing and tearing at the lump that had grown in her belly. It hurt, but she was not screaming. She had seen movies and women always screamed. Ginger nodded as she looked at her watch. Twenty-five minutes.
“They’ll get closer soon.” She casually remarked to Isabelle as she reached for the bag. Looking up and directly at her daughter, “Didn’t last long?”
“Only a few seconds.” How long was long?
They entered the hospital through the emergency entrance and a nurse directed her to a wheelchair before she could protest that she was not really an emergency. When she opened her mouth to talk, the smell of hospital rushed inside and she gasped again. Ginger interrupted her conversation with the admitting nurse to look at her daughter. Isabelle shook her head and Ginger went back to making arrangements for Isabelle’s admital. All of the paperwork had been pre-signed, of course, so this was a matter of putting an armband on Isabelle and making sure the right paperwork followed her into the birthing room.
The wheelchair was grabbed from behind and Isabelle was pushed down a hall. The nurse’s questioning face loomed upside down over Isabelle’s head like a giant peeking over a mountain. Isabelle shook her head to the implied question. She didn’t know how to deal with this constant questioning of her state, so she smiled and shrugged again. She was directed to the bed and quickly got up from the wheelchair on her own and settled herself between the crisp white sheets. That was enough of being treated like an invalid, thank you!
The word was shouted from a distance. Three syllables like that. Izz-a-belle.
“Izz-a-belle,” he repeated with the full force of his first effort.
Ginger had booked one of the cute, nursery-design, birthing rooms they reserve for natural childbirth mothers. Being a natural childbirth mother was very important, Ginger had told her, and Isabelle had signed up without a thought. Ginger had taken control of everything; had even taken her to all of the classes and was to be her birthing partner. That was one place she would never miss Al, Isabelle thought. Better to have Ginger there.
It was early in the morning but the hospital corridors were already busy. They passed several patients on rolling beds and lots of carts of medicine and equipment—one of meal trays. Isabelle remembered it was her breakfast time and she was hungry. She almost grabbed one of the trays as they hurried past, but remembered herself in time to spare her mother this embarrassment. The nurse turned sharply into a room where the yellow wallpaper and ducky patterns made Isabelle forget food for an instant. Like the smell earlier, the image was a shock that prompted a gasp.
“Need a blanket?” The nurse asked cheerily.
When Isabelle answered that she was OK, the nurse produced the blanket anyway and laid it across the foot of the bed. “You may want it later,” she reassured. “First babies can take a while.” There was a scream from a room nearby.
“Izz-a-belle”
Isabelle hated hearing it that way. Her face tightened at the sound and she threw her head back, tossing her Border Collie hair across the left side of her face, ready to shout some appropriate expletive back at him. Her mother would not have approved of that, not the word she was about to shout, not her anger at hearing her own name from somewhere on the first floor, not the streak of white in her dark hair.
This time she heard Jim’s feet on the stairs and his heavy breathing as he came in the door. She should not make him come up those stairs she thought, and then: “He should stop smoking.” He would not, or could not, she knew when he did not stop the winter she made him go into the backyard to the covered patio to practice his filthy habit. “It’s going to kill him,” she thought, and, as she turned her head to see him standing in the doorway, “and I’m not ready for that, yet.” He needed to lose a few pounds as well, she noted.
“Isabelle.” She expected to hear her mother’s voice. Ginger was her birth coach; she should be here.
It was not her mother. It was Jim. How did he find out? Isabelle had made sure he was not on her mother’s call from the hospital list, and no one should be called yet anyway. ... If the nurse was to be believed, it would be hours before there would be a baby to announce.
“I don’t think they allow dates in the rooms,” she quipped, but she was serious too. What was he doing here? They were not even officially dating. She was a pregnant woman and still married to that louse Al, how could she be dating anyone?
He pulled a chair close to the bed and reached for her hand. “How could I not be here?” he asked.
“Why? You aren’t responsible.” She bludgeoned him with that one.
“Maybe if I had met you sooner…”
“Hi you two.” Ginger arrived; her timing precise, as always.
Isabelle glared at her mother and another contraction hit. She could feel Ginger thinking, “You should know better than to defy your mother.” Ginger looked at her watch. “How long was that one?”
“Longer, I think.” It seemed like an eternity to Isabelle.
“Closer, too. Only twenty-three minutes that time.”
They were interrupted again. This time it was the hollow rattle of an equipment cart pushed by a nurse who was followed by Isabelle’s doctor, smiling and chatting in half sentences and small bursts of laughter that bounced from the antiseptic surfaces and around the room. The nurse was wearing yellow ducky pajamas. Isabelle guessed this was a sign that she went with the room. Her doctor was wearing an obscenely cheery face for an early morning visit to the hospital. The room was getting crowded. Isabelle was relieved when the nurse asked Ginger and Jim to wait outside for a few minutes.
After making measurements of her dilation and hooking her up to the monitor on the cart, both doctor and nurse left, allowing Ginger and Jim to return—only it was just Jim. Ginger had gone off on some errand, asking Jim to let her daughter know she would be back “in plenty of time.”
Jim resumed his position next to her bed and reached for her hand.
“Isabelle.” She was sure she knew what he was about to say. Why couldn’t he find a soft syllable in her name? Why did she always have to feel like he was hissing it at her?
“Isabelle,” he began, but before the words could be joined by others, a full thought or, more likely, a complaint, another head was poked into the room.
“Mom,” Gregg whined. “Did you wash my black jeans in with the colors again?”
“No, that was the maid,” she wanted to say, but, as usual, her anger faded at the sight of his handsome fifteen-year-old face. He reminded her of herself at that age, all expectation and potential—another word she disliked.
“It is all potential,” Jim was saying. “We can be a family and your life will be secure and safe, I promise. All you have to do is marry me…”
Isabelle almost jumped out of her skin; not an easy task since she was still tethered to the monitor and weighed down by the baby in her belly. Marry him? Where did that come from? Ginger. It had to be more of her mother’s meddling. She could just imagine what Ginger had said to him about her.
“A contraction?” he asked, full of concern that almost seemed real, even as cynical as Isabelle had become about men. Funny that he took this moment to bring up marriage. She must look a mess.
“If you wanted to wear them this morning, they had to go in the load I was doing.” She sounded bored, even to herself. “I used the special soap,” she added to soften her lack of interest before the protest on his face could leave his lips. Isabelle turned back to the Yoga mat she had laid out on the floor of Christa’s room.
“Will you be at home today?” her husband said to her back. “I have a package coming and someone needs to sign for it.”
“Yes,” she lied, “and breakfast will be ready in a minute.” She added the answer to his next question for efficiency’s sake. She had had this conversation so many times she could do it in her sleep. He looked hurt and surprised, but she was struggling the mat back into a small enough roll to slide under the bed and did not see, or perhaps she did. It was strange that she had never reacted to that look, she thought listening to his feet pounding retreat on the stairs.
The yoga mat, and other things, went under the bed because she was not prepared, as yet, to change the furniture or to occupy any other area. That would come too. It was still Christa’s room in her mind, even if she had determined that she might as well use the space. Things changed and sometimes she was better off if she made the change herself instead of waiting to be pushed by circumstance.
She pulled her head out from under Christa’s bed; balanced herself with one hand on the edge of the mattress and stood up. Isabelle was surprised to notice a children’s book lying on the bed. Perhaps Christa had left it there when she was packing to move into the dorm? Isabelle had not seen it there before, but now the lurid red cape and the cunning wolf’s face with the riveting eyes leapt out at her, and caused a shiver to run up her spine.
It had been hours. The pains were closer together and much more intense. The screams that could be heard in the hall were now Isabelle’s screams. She kept asking for something for the pain.
The first few times, the nurse had gently explained that natural childbirth meant no pain medication. “That’s what you worked so hard for. For your baby.” She patted Isabelle’s arm.
Later, Isabelle was more insistent, but Ginger was still wherever Ginger had gone and the nurse wanted to hear it from Isabelle’s mother. They put her off. Isabelle screamed. She demanded. Finally, the doctor was called in. “This isn’t what we decided, Isabelle.” Her doctor was firm.
“I want something for the pain…” Her words were drowned in the next contraction and her scream.
“It’s too late now.” Her doctor had pulled up the sheet and was looking, once again, at dilation.
“Is it coming?”
“Soon.”
“Not soon enough. I want something for the pain!”
Both doctor and nurse left the room. It was just Jim with her now, and what good was he? He did not even carry aspirin. Isabelle slumped in the bed waiting for the next assault.
A few minutes later a man came through the door, another cheery smile, but this one said, “I understand you want something for the pain?” Tears ran down Isabelle’s face.
“It’s too late for an epidermal,” he stated very firmly. “Your only option now would be a spinal block…” He continued, saying something about risks; not moving afterward, some other things that Isabelle ignored, until he came to the word pain again.
“I want it.” Isabelle shortened the discussion. “Do it now.”
The anesthesiologist went to the door and reached into the hall for another cart. “Can you excuse us.” He said to Jim as he returned to the bed.
Jim tried to get up but Isabelle had her hand gripping his, her nails cutting into his hand. He tried again. The anesthesiologist rolled her on her side making it even harder for Jim to move. “Just one second here…” he said, ignoring the fact that Jim was still in the room, and rolled her onto her back again. “OK. We’re a go.” It was as if he brushed his hands of Isabelle and left, but she didn’t care what he did. The pain was gone.
The tightly rolled exercise mat bumped up against the unfinished sweater, causing the needles that poked out like monster antlers to dance and clatter. In turn, everything pushed against the box of quilting supplies, purchased, gathered, and unused. The family scale had even made its way under there when Isabelle had decided on a diet and then abandoned the idea to breakfasts and a decent lunch.
Christa was happily settled in the college of her choice, as they called the compromise between what they could afford and what Christa fantasized. She had spent her first year at a local college and came home often, but that concession to parental preference was too great an expectation for a second year. Christa had moved away and there was no one using her space anymore.
Through the litany
of imagined complaints running through her head: “Izz-a-belle,” “Izz-a-belle,” “Izz-a-belle,”
Isabelle heard her husband go back downstairs.
She had never liked her name but now she hated the sound of it. “Izz-a-belle;” it
was always followed by someone telling her where she had gone wrong, or where
she was about to. Isabelle. She hated the sound of it. Izzy was worse. Worse yet, Izz.
Isabelle it was. She would have changed it, used her middle name at least, if she had one, but her mother would have cringed at the thought. She had already done enough to her mother, as her father had told her often enough when she herself was a teen.
It was hard for her mother, especially after her father died. Isabelle stroked the part of herself that was inclined to sympathy, but could not help smiling as she looked in the mirror to push her hair back before going down. She still had the white streak, in spite of her mother’s embarrassment. It had been there since she was thirty and all of these years her mother had hated the fact that her daughter’s gray could only make her feel older.
What was it to be today? Again, she asked the question of herself, not saying a word out loud, not including anyone else in her conversation. Eggs and toast, she answered herself and began breaking eggs into a frying pan without turning around.
Tap, crack, splat, jab the yolk with her fork. Tap, crack, splat, jab. Tap, crack… For a moment her mind wandered. She was craving chocolate. Chocolate eggs. It must be that time of month, she thought with some aggravation. A light kiss on her cheek, a hand on her waist, brought her back to awareness. Jim. He never had any consideration for her concentration while working or for her private thoughts.
“Sorry, no breakfast for me this morning. I’m running late.” He reached around her to snatch a slice of toast just coming up in the toaster, kissed her cheek again, and disappeared before she could muster an adequate protest.
No matter. She had only broken three eggs, and “Gregg’s a growing boy,” she thought.
“You know I’m training,” Gregg mumbled as he pushed out the door behind his dad.
“Training for what?” Isabelle wanted to ask, but the thought was overtaken by her anger at the uneaten breakfast. She rattled the frying pan on the burner. She would eat it herself as usual. No wonder she couldn’t lose weight. No wonder she was an embarrassment to herself and others, Jim included, in spite of his assertion that she was as beautiful as always, even with the white streak in her hair. She forgave him when he ran his fingers through her hair making her believe at least that part of his compliment.
“Why do you do this? What do you want from me?” She shouted, letting her anger boil to the surface. Too late of course. When she finally got the words out of her mouth it was always too late. The doors knew though. They were probably well-bruised with all of her angry words over the years. To everyone else she was calm and self-contained, a quiet woman who took care of her family’s needs efficiently and with love. She sometimes wondered who she really was.
The empty house was hers. She sat down at the table, plate, glass and utensils spread out before her; not exactly elegant but inviting enough.
Isabelle lifted a forkful of eggs, a nice level mound that she felt in her mouth with a sense of fulfillment. It only took a few large bites and their eggs, toast and juice, were gone, or gone from the table since they would show up as bulges somewhere on her body. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Everyone knew that. If she never did another thing right, she thought, she would convince her men of the importance of breakfast.
Isabelle had made that resolution several weeks ago. She hadn’t made a note of the date, but it had been long enough for her to get solidly into the habit of a three person breakfast for herself.
Her plan, the one that had the three of them sitting around the breakfast table talking and laughing, and marveling at how she did it all, was ruined. She pouted a bit as she finished her last bite of egg. It didn’t last long, the pouting. She had a routine to follow and this was its start, or so it seemed.
Isabelle’s day usually began with her own dismay at what faced her, but she was used to that by now, and her day was ready to begin, as it had begun since she married Jim seventeen years before. Those days had changed a bit over the years but there was a sameness, a solidity she used to think, that was slipping away from her recently. Sometimes she missed the solid sense of routine and thought she wanted it back, but it was gone.
It was Tuesday. She should be cleaning the kitchen. She knew Rhoda would be over in a while with some new gossip and, in all likelihood, a plan for a weekend outing. The two families usually spent their weekends together doing something.
Isabelle wondered what the something would be this week. It was usually something different every week, unless it was some sport season, when it usually involved watching their boys… Gregg had mentioned training.
Rhoda’s son Bobby played all of the same sports as Gregg. Maybe that was why the two boys were friends. They didn’t have much else in common, except proximity. They had lived not quite next door on the same street for most of their lives. So, proximity. That’s what it was, with Isabelle and Rhoda too. Proximity that sometimes seemed too close without being intimate at all. Isabelle shrugged the thought away. She did not want intimacy with any of these people, not even Jim anymore.
Things were changing. Changing fast. Isabelle did not know what would change next but it would be big, bigger even than her oldest daughter going away to school last year. Bigger than Al walking out on them before Christa was born. Lucky Christa had no memory of her real father now. Sometimes Isabelle was not sure if that was a blessing or a curse. A father like Al could be a warning to a child. She tapped the table with her knuckles. The muted thump was comforting. “May Christa never need such a warning,” she muttered mechanically.
Something was up now, and it would be big. She reached for a last crust of toast and popped it into her mouth. She swept the crumbs from the table and ferried the dishes to the dishwasher with automatic moves honed by years of practice. Soon none of this would matter, she smiled to herself, brushed the crumbs off of her hands into the sink and turned on the water and the disposal. Over the roar, she heard herself saying out loud, “It’s going to kill him.”
Dishes in the dishwasher. She grabbed a paper towel and swept the remaining crumbs onto the floor. “The cat/cleaner will get them,” she thought, smiling for the first time that morning.
She hurried upstairs to dress. It would not do to have Rhoda letting herself in while she was in the shower, but a shower was needed. Isabelle lifted her arm for the armpit test. Not bad, considering the yoga this morning. It didn’t matter. She was going out and how bad she smelled would not be her criteria for dressing today. At the top of the stairs, she paused and looked back down. “Hardly breathing heavily at all,” she congratulated herself, then “It’s going to kill him,” she thought.
Isabelle spent more time than usual on her choice of clothes, but put on an old sweater over her new slacks. She hurried downstairs again to answer the door when she heard Rhoda tapping her nails on the glass as she usually did to announce her arrival at Isabelle’s kitchen. She let her neighbor into the kitchen, pulled out a chair for herself, and then remembered that she had not put out the coffee. “A bad day already?” Rhoda asked, assessing her mood.
“A big breakfast always leaves me sluggish.” She answered without thinking about Rhoda’s obvious response to that.
“Well, I don’t know why you eat so much anyway. I only have dry toast in the morning.”
Isabelle remembered the toast Jim had taken with him on his way out the door. “Lots of people do,” she answered Rhoda. “But lots agree that breakfast is a necessary meal.”
“So what’s with the sluggish thing?” Rhoda nodded that one splash of milk was enough for her coffee. Isabelle knew how Rhoda took her coffee, of course, but Rhoda liked it to be her coffee and that meant having a say in how it was prepared. Coffee was Rhoda’s passion.
Isabelle held the tipped milk carton just an instant longer than, perhaps, she should have. She did not peek to see the sour look come over Rhoda’s face. She did not need to. She knew it was there. “Curdled milk” Isabelle called that face.
“I didn’t sleep all that well, I guess.” Isabelle tried to shift the topic away from eating.
“Not sleeping could be because of too much eating as well you know. Whatever happened to that diet? I only remember seeing you weigh yourself once since Christa left. Whatever happened to all of those resolutions about having a daughter in college? Are you going to wait until Gregg and Bobby leave too…? Maybe we should do a makeover together when they do.”
Rhoda leaned back in her chair and put her hands on her waist — measuring, gloating, offering herself as an example? Isabelle was not sure, but she never trusted Rhoda’s motives. “Rhoda,” Isabelle thought (and not for the first time), “is a predatory woman and she has three ex-husbands to prove it.”
As if she had heard Isabelle’s thoughts, Rhoda smiled and exclaimed, “Harmon always said I took better care of myself than any other mother he had ever seen. I am sure he meant that as an insult at some level, but I had no trouble finding someone else to marry me when he up and left, and me with a five-year-old, too.”
“Mark was a good man,” Isabelle replied as a kind of apology for the Harmon’s and Al’s of this world. Actually, she and Jim had both liked, Mark, Rhoda’s middle husband, best and were sorry when he left Rhoda with the house. If he had not been just a step in Rhoda’s march through all of the eligible men in town (“And some not so eligible,” Isabelle thought spitefully.), he might have insisted on both the house and custody. Bobby would have been better off, Isabelle thought. She had told Jim as much once, but he had taken Rhoda’s side, as men usually did.
“Mark was just like all the others,” Rhoda shrugged. “He came when he chose and he left the same way. Neither one really considered what I might want. And Mike, well, even you can’t condone his behavior.”
True enough. Neither Jim nor Isabelle—nor Rhoda from what Isabelle had observed — had liked the last one, Mike. Six months was not a marriage, even for Rhoda. Still, Isabelle was sure that Rhoda was somehow at fault in that fiasco as well. Isabelle looked at the woman sitting opposite her. Why did men fall all over themselves for Rhoda? She was pretty enough and built, well, men liked those attributes; but look, don’t hover. It seemed easy enough to her.
She imagined what must go on at Rhoda’s house. There was passion, she assumed. Isabelle did not have much passion in her life. She and Jim loved each other, certainly, but they were both settled in and their love life was ruled more by Viagra than by passion.
When she was younger Isabelle had fantasized about movie stars and athletes when they made love. Later she thought about the purple pill nestled between a couple of aspirin, strategically placed between Jim’s scrawny legs. His legs had never been his best physical trait, even when he could have been said to have physical traits to be rated as good or not good. That was what kept them going. Not that they went all that much. Six times a month when they were lucky. Sex was regulated by their insurance company who only approved that many pills.
And usually only on weekends. The only time there was time. And fitted in between chores, like a bridge between the Saturday exertion and the Sunday over-exertion of shopping, mowing, fixing, weeding, oiling, driving Gregg here and there, not that Gregg was much of an issue anymore and he would soon have his own car, already had his learner’s. And one night in there, after everything else had been done for the day, the pill went down and they went. She wondered if everyone came to think of Ben-Gay as a pheromone? If every couple of their relatively young age was reduced to chemical dependency instead of passion? Probably not Rhoda.
Isabelle replaced a lot of fantasies with one about what was going on at Rhoda’s house when Gregg invited Bobby for all of those sleepovers.
One thing she could say about Jim was that he was reliable, unlike Al – Christa’s father and Isabelle’s first (faster than a speeding bullet as he moved in and on) husband. Nonetheless, she wanted more. Looking at Rhoda across the table, she knew just how much more she wanted and how much she had missed out on.
If this were a television show, she thought, I would tell Rhoda all of these thoughts and we would cook up some girl-plan to get even with men. Instead of opening her mouth to tell Rhoda what was on her mind, Isabelle felt her stomach grip. Not a good sign for the rest of the day, she thought.
“More coffee?” She asked cheerily, as if her real words were not “Go home.”
Rhoda nodded. She never passed up coffee and Isabelle made a good cup, in spite of her tendency to over milk the thing. Rhoda’s hand darted out to stop the milk carton before it could defile the brew, caught the corner of the cardboard container and caused the whole thing to slosh, much of it splattering over the table and onto Isabelle’s lap. “Oh, my, I’m so sorry,” Rhoda sputtered.
Isabelle screeched and hurried to the sink where she proceeded to wet a paper towel and rub at her slacks. “Everyone knows rubbing them like that will just press lint into the weave,” Rhoda thought with a slight taint of smugness. Isabelle was the good housewife after all, but then she saw the tears well up in Isabelle’s eyes. “I need to be more careful,” she said. She could have kicked herself.
“I am so sorry,” Rhoda exclaimed again rushing to the sink and looking every bit as if she were sorry and as if she might try to help. She stopped suddenly, nearly a pace away from where Isabelle stood rubbing at her slacks.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” Isabelle sounded weepy.
She knew exactly what she was thinking. They both did. It was all Isabelle could do not to snap at her neighbor but said “It’s OK. I wasn’t dressed for anything special anyway.”
Isabelle continued the process of wiping milk from her new slacks. “Not that I’d tell you about it,” she thought, trying to smile and act casual. “I guess it is time I got busy cleaning this kitchen.” She said out loud, and looked at Rhoda with a clear order in her eyes: Get out now. Her mouth made a sweet bowed smile in spite of the tension she felt there.
Rhoda smiled back, a more relaxed smile. She felt some kind of triumph for herself in the look on Isabelle’s face. It was not the kindest thought, she knew, but she took her victories where she could. This was a good note on which to end their weekly visit, even though they had not decided anything for the weekend. Just as well. She and Bobby could really use some time together. He was growing up so fast. Maybe it was time for that little ritual of neighborly togetherness to end?
Rhoda was gone, out the door and flouncing her way cattycorner up the street toward her own house. Isabelle looked out the window after her. How had she ever become friendly with such a person? Neighborhoods made strange bedfellows. She smirked; Rhoda probably had lots of strange bedfellows. Isabelle looked around at the neatly maintained houses on her street. Most of the doors had a husband behind them, in the evenings or on weekends at least, mowing and bar-b-queing. How many has Rhoda made special friends of? Isabelle, and to a lesser extent Jim, had never made friends of any of these people. Why should she be friendly with someone when all they had in common was a coincidental choice in housing location? Gregg had chosen Rhoda for them when he chose Bobby.
Isabelle turned back into her own living room; gave it a quick and cursory sweep with her eyes. “This house needs to be cleaned again,” she mumbled to herself, imagining her mother’s tone. “I just get all the dirt shoved under the rug and it starts to creep back out,” she answered in her imagination. It looked OK to her; would certainly pass inspection by Jim, for all he had ever noticed, and by Gregg, who was fifteen and only cared about surroundings if they were close to his. Clothes made the fifteen year old.
Isabelle smiled in spite of herself, but the wet she felt on her leg brought her back to the present. Should she change her slacks or have faith that the milk spot would dry better than it looked now: Wet, sprinkled with white flecks of paper towel, and hinting of the crusty glaze of dried lactose. The clock answered the question for her.
She pulled the old sweater over her head as she rushed up the stairs, tossed it into the laundry pile as she hurried into the bathroom. The mirror confirmed her worst nightmare. She did not need to worry about the state of her slacks. Whatever happened with them, they would look better than her face.
Lipstick was a foreign substance in her life and wielding the wand was an awkward task without practice, but it would help make her look fresher, less like the housework drudge she saw in the mirror. It would take more than a quick comb-through to civilize her hair this morning. She held her breath and sprayed as much of the hairspray as she could stand into the room, hitting her hair as often as possible. She had already put on a touch of mascara, but a touch more might be just the thing. She winced as the wand hit eyeball instead of lash. The tears wanted to keep coming but she held them back. No time for that, she told herself sternly.
The telephone rang, a harsh tinkling sound from her open bedroom door. What now? She demanded. Couldn’t anyone appreciate that she was on a schedule! To be fair, and she did not feel much like the gesture right then, she had not told anyone her plans so how could they be considerate? They should just know, she thought and almost stamped her foot in her exasperation.
She hesitated. If she did not answer, who would know she was right there or that she had heard the ring? It rang again. It would keep on for five rings before the voice mail picked up. If it was Gregg or the school, or Christa’s college, they would try right back. They would be worried and keep trying. Gregg knew she had said she would be home.
“Hello.” It was her mother. Why did she never remember to look at the caller ID? “Yes, Mom.” “I know.” “I know.”
Isabelle carried the phone up and down the hall as she paced. She did not have time to sit.
“If Suzy can do so much, why hasn’t she been to see you in two years,” she wanted to say, as her mother wasted time, Isabelle’s valuable time this morning, time that flew when she was on a schedule, telling her about her younger sister’s promotion to full partner. Oh, yes, and she had a drawing her youngest granddaughter had done in pre-school and it was so cute. “Lucinda is just such a darling. And so talented.” Ginger concluded without having heard a word out of Isabelle, who had only replied with sarcasm and only in her head.
“Sorry, Mom,” she started to say.
“You aren’t on a
schedule anyway.” Her mother replied, a
hurt tone in her voice. “I was always on
a schedule. Only my-time was the half hour I had for lunch. For twenty-six years, 30 minutes, not 29, not
31, 30 minutes to do whatever I had to do, even personal things, though of
course it was more often something for you or your sister. A flexible schedule…” She made it sound like bon-bons or vacations on the
“Yes, well, I’m in the middle of something right now. Can I call you later?”
Isabelle did not wait for a reply, but answered her own question with “Bye,” and the click of the receiver. There was no chance of her getting back on schedule now. Fortunately, she had assumed there would be problems when it mattered and allowed a little extra time. Just like when Gregg was born and she had told Jim she was in hard labor when her water had broken and there were no contractions yet. They got to the hospital not only on time but ahead of her doctor. Isabelle liked that story. She liked being efficient.
Isabelle went back to the bathroom, took a long look in the mirror, and decided there was no more to be done there. She still looked a mess but there was nothing more she could do about it. She slipped on her favorite white blouse, a pair of earrings, and comfortable flats. She often had premonitions about shoes and she felt that today they should be comfortable. She was ready.
It was still not time to leave, so she gathered some things from the top of the washing machine and took them to Gregg’s room. She began sorting and folding socks, slipping them neatly onto the top of the pile he had made in his drawer, a precarious crown to the random mound. She stopped and looked around her; stopped folding and dropped the rest of the socks and the shorts into the drawer helter-skelter; shoved it closed; and brushed her hands against the sides of her slacks, indicating she was finished with that.
She looked at her watch; gathered her supplies for the day: purse, pen, comb. She was always early, one of her most virtuous traits. Too bad most people could not keep to that standard. To be honest, it made her impatient waiting for people who were merely on time.
She lifted her arm again. Sniffed. Respectable, she thought, and hurried toward the dining room. Her palms were wet and she wanted to slide them down the sides of her slacks, both for comfort and to dry them, but it was important to look fresh even if she did not exactly feel that way. She held her arms away from her body and let the air circulate as she pushed herself forward toward her goal.
There was a map on top of the stack of papers Isabelle pulled from under the neatly stored tablecloth in the dining room cabinet. A red line drawn on one section of the folded map connected the freeway entrance nearest Oak Haven Manor, which had no oaks and was a collection of average homes with average people in them and not a manor at all, with the part of town she planned to visit. That was called the Warehouse District, a name she was sure was a more accurate description.
Off the freeway, two lefts, a right, and
into the parking garage across from the building. It might be in front; she had not actually
seen the building or the parking lot.
She pictured something two story; unpainted concrete; screened windows,
not the kind to keep out insects; and a drab sign stenciled directly onto the
concrete front next to the door. The
numbers above the door, if her directions worked, would be
Under the map was an ad torn from the newspaper. Under that, a skimpy sheet of typing paper she brazenly called a resume, and a handful of tissues. She was only eighteen when she first married. How much resume could she make out of after school jobs over twenty years ago and occasional volunteer work since?
She did not even keep the family books. She had seen that resume suggestion for women returning to the workplace on “The View.” Fortunately, numbers would not be an issue, though it was good to keep in mind that she could pick up almost anything, given time.
She picked up her car keys, cell phone, and sweater. The telephone on the kitchen wall rang. Ginger would have called her cell; would have guessed Isabelle was going out. It rang again. Isabelle paused a long time but finally picked up the receiver.
She flinched at his voice. So there it was. He wanted to come tonight. She was not surprised but still could not think of anything to say. She had already used all of the no’s in her vocabulary. She was going to be late... “Tell him that,” she thought, and followed her own advice, which worked for once. The phone clicked and went dead on the other end.
It was cool outside but not cold. Isabelle felt cold. She gave the living room one last critical look. It looked OK. Anyway, it would have to do because she was on her way out the door.