Neighbors
by Linda Lowe
While Clarice set the table with their best linen, and the silver and China they hadn’t used in years, her husband John put a stack of records on the old hi fi. Most evenings they listened to the songs they danced to when they were young. As she hummed along to “Love Walked In,” the microwave dinged several times.
The smell of salmon wafted through their house. Salmon-like, anyway. Howie, their late cat, would have been meowing his head off.
Earlier Clarice had filled the crystal decanter with water and put it in the refrigerator to chill. Now she poured it into the goblets, and called John to dinner by ringing the crystal bell one of the children had given them long ago. She’d never used it because it seemed so ostentatious, but now that they’d reached the “for poorer” part of their wedding vows, she wanted everything tres elegant. It had to do with putting forth your best effort when you felt your worst.
Clarice took the bowl from the microwave, and spooned the cat food onto the china plates. John stood behind her chair, ever the gentleman, waiting to seat her as he had for the last sixty years.
After raising their glasses, toasting Howie, it was time forthe business of eating.
While John salted and salted his portion, always having shown complete disregard for the perils of sodium, it occurred to Clarice that there was no law against pepper. She remembered hearing that in India, the people liked their food so hot they peppered it to the place where it was completely blackened, and this struck her as a splendid idea, and so she shook and shook the pepper over the cat food, until it was entirely unrecognizable. John followed suit, and the dinner was suddenly more intriguing, like their first time in an exotic restaurant, far from home.
Once they put their napkins in their laps, John waited politely, as he always had, for Clarice to take the first bite.
**
In the hospital room, the nurse has given Martha a plastic bag for her belongings and a gown to wear. It’s 5:30 a.m. and still dark outside. The drapes are open and all Martha sees is black. Black as a witch, she thinks. As ten million dozen witches. Something is blaring from the television. Some crazy cartoon.
Before the nurse left, she instructed Martha about the gown. She is to put it on so that it opens in the front. Or did she say, so that it opens in the back? Martha decides to wait for Bob, her husband. He’s parking the car, isn’the?
Bob told Martha that he’s brought her the hospital for some tests because of the incident. An incident he refers to as the straw that broke the camel’s back. She recalls this phrase because how could such a thing happen? It must have been a log.
The incident occurred one morning when, as usual, Martha brought in the newspaper. But instead of dividing it up and giving Bob a couple of sections, and keeping a couple forherself, she tossed it whole into the washing machine. Bob’s t-shirts and underwear came out covered with soggy paper. He was upset when Martha laughed and said, “Look, Honey, the Dodgers lost again. It says so on your t-shirts.”
Bob somehow set the washer to washing it all again, and then asked Martha to explain the dryer. But the dial looked like a stranger, so she said, “It must say something about time, and that’s what you want so your t-shirts and underpants aren’t wet when you put them on.” The word underpants sent her into gales of giggles. “Underpants, underpants, I see London,I see France.”Then she said, “Besides, it’s the washer that’s making all the noise, why are you worrying about the dryer? That sounds like buying trouble to me.”
Bob’s beside her now. Martha wonders why she’s in this room with a television blaring. She remembers from her teaching days that televisionis a noun. Blare is a verb. Turn it off is a command. She says, “Turn it off.” Bob finds the remote and grants her wish.
In the silence Martha says, “Shouldn’t we be sleeping? What will our neighbors think?” She’s looking for answers, but answers are like breadcrumbs in the forest, difficult to find, even in the sunlight.
**
The day came when Nora and Irving could no longer climb the stairs to their bedroom. Thus they were forced to spend the night in the living room.
When they woke in the morning, the staircase was gone. The disappearance was so shocking that they decided to sell the house. They would call someone to put in new stairs and then contact a realtor. But when they went to use the phone, they discovered it was missing.
Nora said, “Let’s start the day over with a nice hot breakfast.” She went to the kitchen to make the coffee and start the bacon frying, but the coffee pot and skillet were nowhere to be found.
Bit by bit the house faded away until Nora and Irving were left in a single room without pictures on the walls, without the wall paper, where daylight vanished as well.
Nora said, “Sweetheart, whatever happens, we still have our memories,” but when she tried to recall a single incident from their long life together, the past was merely a speck on the horizon of her mind.
As soon as Nora told Irving the sad news that her memory was gone, she was overwhelmed by the fact of silence.
Reaching for his hand, she said, “Sweetheart, I’ve lost my hearing too.”
Linda Lowe received her M.F.A. in poetry from the Universityof California, Irvine. A chapbook ofpoems, “Karmic Negotiations” was published by Sarasota Theatre Press. Her stories have appeared online in The Pedestal Magazine and LITSNACK. Contact Linda.
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