Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
Saturday was the sort of east coast day when it would be easy to fall in love. Spring invaded every inch of Viv’s life. A lone daffodil bulb suspended in a small glass vase of water blossomed a couple of perky flowers. Three blooms had risen from an orchid she’d given up on—dark burgundy centers bled into sunflower yellow petals. Even her Christmas cactus had sprouted, unexpectedly delivering a proud pink bud.
“So odd,” Viv told her sister, “for it to bloom. It’s not Christmas. Not yet Easter.”
“It happens,” her sister said from her landline, she hated cellphones, “more often than you think.”
Viv wanted to explain that she hadn’t thought about it, not even a bit. It wasn’t something that burdened her. Not as if she’d walked to the round table by the front room window and pondered why the cactus had all of a sudden flowered. It wasn’t a weighty issue to her, not like the shiny piece of volcanic rock on the chain around her neck that she’d found in a drawer the night before. She’d been given it in Iceland once, after a fifth night’s dinner of cod with carrots and parsnips, the prior evening’s cod accompanied by herring in horseradish and sweet potatoes bittered by a scathing sauce, the lunch that day cod burgers. Reykjavik had been an interesting contract, a tech startup in tumult, filled with hardy sons and dóttirs of parents who were hardier still. Many of them drunk morning until their late nights spent in local hot springs, but they were very industrious workers, clever.
“Why do you stay here?” her sister asked each time she visited New York.
“Just where I ended up,” Viv said. She’d had an adjunct gig at Gabelli, the business school at Fordham, some years back. Meant to move on after her Social Security kicked in. But something about the Bronx held her. It was in the city but quieter—except when it was noisy. Near the Botanical Gardens. Mostly well-kept brick two-family homes. Irish pubs nearby that she’d never frequented. In general, people cleaned up after their dogs. But only in general.
She pulled at a few hairs tangled in the silver chain that hung inches from her throat. Hair that was now fully gray although when she looked close, bent forward towards the bathroom mirror, she saw the brunette who had lost her battle with age. Viv wondered if that happens to eyes; do they, too, lose color or just vivacity? Same as how good legs and smiles begin to sag. She wore a sweater and corduroys with pockets and scrounged around in her brain considering things more pressing than flowers.
Like what was the deal with the crazy lady from the house three doors down, a broken front window, a blanket nailed over it? Neighbors rolled their eyes when they passed. One told Viv, “What can ya do?”
“Right,” Viv said because she had no good answers.
Crazy lady’s body was lumpy. She wore pink leggings and gold animal print tops to wherever she went at five-thirty every morning. Earrings so large Viv could see them from her second-floor window. Why had the woman stomped stomped stomped from her house today, on this particular Saturday afternoon, in a green nightgown and clunky rainboots and darted away with her husband and granddaughter in the car? Driving in rainboots and a nightgown at 2pm? What was that about?
It wasn’t even raining.
Viv could see that Grandma was the only one allowed to drive the old black Civic so gashed and dented that duct-tape would be a blessing. The rear door handle was missing and their intelligent looking granddaughter, tiny, slight build, probably about thirteen, reached through the driver’s side to unlatch it so she could get into the backseat. Poor kid, Viv thought. Living in a family of nutcases. Once she’d heard the girl yell,
“I’m not with them,” and then she skirted ahead of the two old people.
Good for you, thought Viv! You’re not! I agree!
The grandfather’s black gym shoes, old school with Velcro straps around the ankles, never lifted from the ground. Like a cross-country skier, he slid his feet over bumps and cracks in their street. Grandpa was an honest to God mess, only thing dingier than his skin his grey hoodie. He wore a black knit cap as if he was a dock worker or planning a heist. EMTs picked him up twice, often three times a month—more like his personal Uber service, the red and silver Bronx ambulance, lights flashing, siren fading to silent when they arrived to get him. He always returned home a few hours later, on foot no less, and with a Styrofoam of coffee in his hand. On this Saturday, at 2:45pm, nightgowned Grandma skidded the car back into her favorite parking spot too close to the green PO mailbox, the space so tight Grandpa would have a very-hard-time opening his door.
Well, that’s a fine fuck you, Viv laughed out loud.
Grandma shook her keys, had to find the right one, must lock that valuable car. Grandpa slithered from the passenger side. The teen jumped from the rear and raced to be far in front of them both. She carried a paper sack from the Golden Arches. Viv’s mouth watered for those thin French Fries she’d not had in decades. She wondered what was in the girl’s plastic bag from the Dollar Tree. Had to at least give Grandma credit for taking the kid shopping.
Viv watched hard, scratched her hand, and concentrated on the girl’s even more concentrated strides along the sidewalk. Eyes straight ahead, not a glance to Viv’s second floor windows, or any expression that would send an anguished plea. The teen was ardent with restraint; there was a cockiness to the slender girl who’d had her long straight dark hair cut above her shoulders recently. Viv took that to be a good omen.
A good omen with French Fries at that.
They never even spoke, Viv and the girl who kept laser focused on her next steps. Viv had wanted to, had hesitated when she was near her on the sidewalk, thought that if she slowed down, the girl might make eye contact the way people do in single file lines trudging through penitentiary hallways. It hadn’t happened and Viv thought it best not to try; wouldn’t want to be the reason the teen got into trouble; she didn’t like to imagine that grandma’s boiling point. Viv even turned away from the window when she heard the old woman spew “what the hell, why the fuck, who damn it, who damn it,” at her husband in his velcro’d sneakers.
“This is the day the Lord hath made,” Viv chanted to the window, not being religious, just a refrain, “rejoice and be glad.”
***
She decided to fold away the thick blankets strewn around the house. A Saturday project she could complete! It was, after all, the start of spring. Viv pulled plastic crates from a stack by the closet. She’d bought far too many a couple years ago at Target. Then found the better kind a week later, with snap-shut lids which she really liked. Liked the sound of them shutting. Kept them all. Viv couldn’t see the point to returning something so close to worthless. She’d calculated out her time, the fuel, the cost to park (which enraged her, no one in the Midwest would ever pay to park at a Target), not to mention impulse buys which she’d eventually have to bag for charity.
“What’s with all the bins?” her sister had asked. “Packing up?”
“They were so damn cheap,” Viv explained.
“That’s still a lot of bins.” Her sister stared at the stack but then told her exactly how to place sticky notes upside down on the insides of the lids with lists of what was in each one. “When you store them, where you gonna put them by the way, well, make a diagram so you know where each one is. Like a map.”
“A map?” Viv asked. She didn’t really care but found her sister’s organizational skills fascinating.
“Well, you don’t want to have to ransack through them to find the one you need, do ya?”
“Oh, no. Wouldn’t want to do that. Of course not,” she agreed because her sister was wiser about these things.
Yet the idea of ransacking was something Viv had looked forward to doing someday. She’d envisioned coming into some money, no idea how, and moving to a home upstate near woods, but not too far up the state, and nowhere by any place with Lyme Disease. She’d had plenty of health scares of her own. Plus been bedside for a fair share of family member’s deaths and had decided, firmly, no more.
“When it comes time, I’m outta here,” she told her friend out west who lived close enough to smell the Pacific and shared a home with friendly people and a big upper deck with twinkling lights under the flightpath to Lindbergh Field.
“I’m with you, honey,” her friend said. She was that kind of friend. She only questioned your decisions if she thought hard about them and decided they were too reckless. Otherwise, she’d mend herself to your shirt if needed. That kind of good friend.
***
Viv went to Manhattan when the weather wasn’t audaciously horrible, meaning it could be cold but not filled with the wrath of strong winds, or it could be warm but not so hot that meeting for coffee was a penance. She took the Metro North to Harlem and walked the few blocks to a subway line to go to anything free. Free and interesting was a victory. She’d gone to a street fair on the west side the summer before and it hadn’t been worth it. Like Target gone tie-dyed. But the flea market in Dumbo under the Manhattan Bridge Archway was very cool.
“It was rad,” she told her west coast friend who didn’t find her word choices odd.
“Far out,” the friend said. She always wore beautiful cotton tops from Tijuana and shoes you’d think only existed for fancy dolls. “Did you buy anything?”
“No way. Too expensive. But you’d have liked the earrings.”
“Sounds neato,” she said. She, too, liked the expressions they shared. Words that they both agreed had sunk into their hearts and sustained them like love once did.
Yesterday, Viv had gone to what she thought was free night at the Whitney on Gansevoort Street—it was listed on the website she’d printed out and stuck under a Georgia O’Keefe magnet on her refrigerator. She’d been to free Friday at MOMA a few weeks before. Crowded but worth her travel time and train fares and even her aching feet—she got to stand alone in front of Monet’s lilies.
But Friday night didn’t turn out to really be a free night to see Warhol at the Whitney. Viv had to wait in a long line although it moved fast. The smell of pizza swirled over from a place across the street. Everyone very busy holding phones in the air and taking pictures of themselves. Didn’t seem to matter what museum it was. Just photos of twos and threes with the building’s wild architecture construct somewhere in the background.
“Let’s take a selfie,” Viv heard.
“Selfie!” four people yelled and huddled close.
“Take me, I’ll take you,” said another.
“Can you?” a large group handed their phone to a stranger and sidled back like a movable human skyline.
People clearly needing to have their selves memorialized.
Still, Viv enjoyed the fashion show around her. One person walked by in rhinestone gold shoes with soles thicker than the longest Ken Follet book she’d ever read; she wondered if it was hard to keep your balance in those things. She particularly liked the woman in a white tam, white coat, white slacks, and again those thick soled shoes, also white. Viv kept thinking of Yoko Ono. She was impressed with her evening’s free choice until they were herded into a queue to pay.
“I thought it was free tonight,” she said to two young women ahead of her in line.
“It’s pay what you want,” they told her and turned away. She realized she’d interrupted their heavy conversation about whether it was worth it for one of them to move from somewhere in Brooklyn where ‘at least she had her own bathroom’ to a nicer place near 145th in Harlem which ‘would be cool but you know … and the rent’s higher.’ Maybe it was Viv’s gray hair put them off. Her own mother had dyed hers red until, well, until she died.
“How much?” an energetic artiste type across the counter asked and held out her hand to Viv. “Credit card?”
“Free?” she felt very brave asking this.
“No, you have to pay something.”
This bothered Viv. She could of course afford something and dug inside for her wallet. Yet, she was unnerved by it. Felt she’d been daft. Not in the asking. Not in coming. But in not knowing. She should have known.
“Ma’am?” the artiste looked bored; hand still outstretched.
“Give me a moment,” Viv said and backed against the stanchion, the heavy rope that corralled visitors and deposited them at the point of payment.
“You can’t stand there,” artiste-cashier cocked her head, bent it forward, her eyes instructing Viv to move on.
“I know.” Viv hesitated but then extracted her fumbling hand from her purse. She ceased rummaging for her wallet for the few dollars sure to be inside.
The eyes remained on her from across the counter.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Viv said and “excuse me” again, turned left to right to left again, uncertain, quite discombobulated at not knowing which way she was allowed to exit, to decline what hadn’t been an invitation. She thought artiste-cashier might call out to her, say ‘oh, go ahead,’ but she did not. Viv trailed behind fashionable people who darted about the lobby, some to the elevator and others to the museum store where Viv touched a blanket, but it wasn’t soft or pleasant. Not knowing what to do, but knowing she hadn’t paid to be there, she’d opted to head home.
***
On Sunday, with her lovely porcelain cup of coffee in hand and the Times on the table by her flowering cactus, Viv was saddened to read about a handyman in Clinton Hill who was being evicted from his apartment of many years for far less than any good reasons. She guffawed at the headline “Can Women Save the World” and thought fuck you and how dare you set us up to be the fall guys—that would be like inheriting a house already in foreclosure. She wondered what Mr. Warhol might think of paying what you want meaning you must pay something. Haven’t we paid enough? Most of us? Except for those few whom she hoped had nightmares and health issues she didn’t want to name.
On page 19 of the Times, there was a story she almost passed by because it looked to be a heady report, and Viv’s brain couldn’t take such impact anymore. Maybe a person can only luggage around a limited amount of the world’s crap and then it’s time for younger people to take over, to fill their own bins, to listen to lids snap-shut, to enjoy the sound of the snap.
Never-the-less, Viv began to read.
With her first quick look, crude knives in a photo appeared to be artifacts from another place and time. Relics that would bespeak history and how humans weathered against winds and heat and large dangerous creatures. She learned instead they were handmade instruments of protection and human battles within an Alabama jail 947 miles south of her flat in the Bronx. Mangled, stained, well-used shivs. One picture out of more than 2,000 the Times had received that documented blood—red clotted bruised blood on walls, on bodies, on sneakers, on wounds. Too gruesome to publish, the writer described nineteen photos of a black man naked “but for a pair of handcuffs.” In another, two white guards averted their eyes. A young man in solitary had no windows—seared in blood on his wall: I ask everyone for help.
With some righteousness, Viv stopped reading the paper. Enough. She refolded it and neatened the sections into a pile on her table, watched Sunday Morning on CBS, her favorite show of the week, she loves Jane Pauley, and listened to a scientist talk about how the answers we need have already been solved in nature. They reported that slime from slugs can be used to glue together wet broken bones, how porcupine quills have led to a new medical staple for wounds, and that the adhesive quality of a frog’s saliva holds a plethora of treasures.
“We know where to go for new ideas,” the scientist declared, in her warm, calm scientific voice.
Viv didn’t take her Sunday morning coffee cup to the sink in the kitchen. She didn’t run warm water to soak it with bubbles until she felt ready to wash dishes.
“I may never be ready,” she thought.
She walked to her closet. There was only one on her floor of the two-family house, but it was a big closet for New York. Like a small room. It had a window and that made her smile. Sunlight flickered in towards the clothes on racks that she rarely wore. Her black pants and few shirts were enough. Shoes and boots she’d found irresistible crowded around the edges vying for storage space. A cardboard tube leaned in the corner. It held a few unique lithographs she’d bought back when she traveled for work and made good money. Known artists. She’d included those in her handwritten will left inside her sock drawer beneath argyles and stripes, ankle and knee socks accrued with such care. A shame no one ever saw them underneath the boots she’d always worn.
Four plastic crates sat by the wall, each marked as her sister had instructed. A piece of typing paper affixed to the top, the map of their contents indicated that the one she needed was second from the bottom. She slid it onto the floor. Closed the closet door so she could be alone (although she was alone, and she knew that).
Viv pulled a couple of sweatshirts from a clothes basket and used them as a cushion to sit upon, cross-legged, same as when she’d been a girl at camp in Wisconsin. She opened the lid. Snap. She closed it. Snap. Opened it again.
“Such a wondrous sound,” she said and wished she’d thought to bring music into the closet with her. But it was too late and much too much a bother. Viv was tired. Sick of having answers throughout her life, ideas that could help solve problems, opinions. Dear God, too many opinions. Her only regret this day was that she might never know when (not if) the young girl three doors down would escape. The words pay what you want beat in her head like a shiv pointed at her being. Why? Why pay at all? What happens if everyone refuses to pay?
Viv had read that Iceland is one of the safest countries in the world. It has only five prisons with beds for less than two hundred people. The prisoners do their own cooking. They go to the local village weekly to shop and have the freedom to walk outside near fields of cattle. Each prisoner has a room, no cellblocks, and they have keys, although it was reported they don’t bother to lock their doors. When they wake in the morning, their eyes see mountains and snow and sheep and grass outside their windows.
Windows are such a luxury.
She ransacked the plastic bin. Slipped her hand below a pink sweater her sister gave her that made her smile. Flipped through journals that were on top of prehistoric autograph albums she no longer cared to read. She found the elderly leather fringed shoulder bag she was looking for. Her fingers played with the volcanic rock around her neck until she reached inside the purse for a small square gift box. Beneath its lid were the turquoise dangly earrings she’d worn too long ago at a Blood, Sweat, and Tears concert and below those were the pills she’d hoarded for years. Was today the best day, she wondered? The right day? She’d planned to walk the grounds of the Botanical Gardens on this week’s free Wednesday.
“Oh my,” she sighed a breath so deep, so cutting, so much a part of sleep.
Marcia Bradley teaches at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and her BA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in LA. Published in Two Hawks, Hippocampus, The Capital Gazette, an honorable mention from Glimmer Train, and a monologue from her new novel in-progress was performed by the FAU Theatre Lab as a part of Stories About Hope during the time of the 2020 Coronavirus. Marcia attended Ragdale, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College. She won a 2019 Bronx Council on the Arts Award for fiction. Marcia lives in the Bronx where she dreams in words. @marciabradley