It was strangely difficult to access any specific memory, but these unasked for memories just bubbled up. Her face was peaceful, slack. If she was homesick for those years of raising children, of handmade cards sticky with syrup, of Lego under the sofa, of midnight bedwetting, of those small bodies always pressed against hers, it was such a constant state she didn’t interpret it as homesickness. In any case, homesickness, like love, took energy, and this was something Milly did not have a lot of. Despite centuries of literature and music proclaiming otherwise, Milly knew that love was not what remained when everything else was stripped away. What remained was an awareness that love had been. Milly needed every ounce of energy to get out of bed in the morning, and repeat the essential routines of daily life.
When she surfaced, it was exactly five o’clock. First thought: Close the blinds.
Second: Where is Jack?
Third: Have the dogs been fed?
Fourth: Are the children all right?
Fifth: When will I see them?
These last two were wistful, thin thoughts, and evaporated within seconds. Not like numbers one, two and three, which were on a constant loop.
She rose slowly from her chair and closed down the house. Flicked each venetian blind down, switched on lamps, looked for dog food then remembered. Did the pepper grinder need more peppercorns already? Gosh darn it.
‘Jack! Jack!’
‘What is it?’ Still losing at solitaire to the computer, in between naps in his chair. Computers cheated, obviously.
‘Come here, please. I need you to open the pepper grinder.’
‘I’m busy, Milly. In a minute, okay?’
‘Oh, to hell with you,’ she said, leaning on the table, the grinder in one clenched fist.
At the periphery of her vision were all the people who wandered her house from time to time. When she was anxious or angry, like now, they tended to creep a little closer to centre stage. (Not quite like her vision of four-year-old Elisabeth in her Oshkosh overalls, or the way she’d hallucinated her sister, Louise, for a few weeks, a million years ago.) She didn’t know these folk. And no, they did not frighten her; they seemed a friendly lot, placidly walking around her rooms, intent on getting somewhere for some ordinary task. To the store for milk and bread; to the garden to pull weeds; to the hall closet for clean towels. Yes, she understood they couldn’t exist, and, yes, she also knew not to mention them to Jack any more. He dismissed them as urinary infection hallucinations.
Secretly, she believed they might have an existence. She’d become fond of a few in particular, a small boy and a fat old woman. Some days she convinced herself the boy was her baby Charlie, grown seven years older, and the fat woman could be her long-lost sister, Louise, grown old. Loulou had always run to fat. They looked her in the eyes, unlike the others, so if they existed perhaps they had a fondness for her too. They didn’t talk, but their presence was calming. Maybe they were in the future, and to them, she was the ghostly figure that couldn’t rationally exist. Perhaps, she thought, her loneliness had pulled them out of thin air for company. Perhaps they already existed, and her eyesight had developed somewhat. As if the older she got the thinner the membrane between herself and an afterlife. They’d been around for about a year now, and were hardly worth noting any more. Part of the furniture, so to speak.
After they had dinner, microwaved macaroni cheese, Milly made the treacherous journey from table to dishwasher, while holding on to both her walker and an expensive plate. Sometimes she put items on the floor and gently slid them along with her feet. Sometimes she used her mouth for carrying things, like dishcloths and newspapers. But plates were just too heavy, not to mention slippery. She took the plates one at a time, and nudged the walker along with her lower arms and elbows. If Jack was asked how his crippled, partially sighted wife managed to set and clear the table, serve meals, make their bed, do the laundry, he would shrug and laugh like a naughty boy. ‘I have no idea!’ he’d say gleefully, and it was true. He’d rarely witnessed her doing these daily tasks. He was a busy man, and anyway – what else did she spend her days doing? What bills had she paid? What job had she spent fifty years working at?
Milly, Jack often said, was getting away with murder. The kitchen radio was on, as usual, and tuned to Classic FM – not because they particularly liked classical music but because it was a new digital radio, and they’d given up figuring it out. A rogue programmer had allowed an old Billie Holliday to slip in between Mozart and Chopin. If I should take a notion, to jump into the ocean. Milly inserted the last dirty dish – Jack’s dinner plate – into the dishwasher, and then with a melodramatic arm gesture, as if sweeping away hordes of admirers, she said: ‘Wa!’ to the empty kitchen. The walking folk scattered instantly and disappeared like a spray of water on a hot sidewalk. What she meant by this odd syllable – by Wa – was a combination of voilà and moi. Wa meant: This is me!
The best of me I’ve got. Take me or leave me, darn you.
Milly said Wa! a lot, but Billie Holliday had caused this particular Wa.
She’d always been susceptible to certain music. Classical music had no nostalgia for her; it was neutral, impersonal noise. But this! If I go to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday, it ain’t nobody’s business if I do. She had no defence against this. She closed her eyes and recalled dancing. Like her grandchildren’s fingers twitching in the correct sequence when they were imagining texting someone. Her day-to-day memory was poor, but her muscles had an excellent memory. The swing of her left foot now, the sliding, the twirling, the precise flying feel of her arms as they floated in the air to the sad defiant music. I swear I won’t call no copper, if I’m beat up by my poppa.
Her eyes squeezed shut. Pretending to dance always brought a wave of sweetness and melancholy. Too much, and when the song ended, she was limp.
‘Hey. Honey. Milly.’
‘Jack! How long have you been standing there? Did you need something?’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Nothing. What do you mean?’
‘I saw you.’
And this was when his great idea trickled back in. A good husband might flirt with other women, but he did not leave his wife. Milly was his person. He fell in love with her all over again, as if he’d just met her. Tears welled up.
‘So?’
‘Were you, sort of, dancing?’ His voice cracked on the last word.
‘What? Are you bananas?’ A full face frown. Eyebrows, mouth, nose, jaw.
‘You were, weren’t you?’
After a pause, Milly said primly: ‘I was thinking about dancing. I was remembering. But how did you know?’
‘Just the way you shut your eyes. And you kind of rocked. A bit.’
‘Did I?’
‘And smiled too.’
Milly glared, then said: ‘Oh, come here, you.’
‘No, you’ll hurt me. You’ll tickle me.’
‘Don’t be silly. I am not the one who tickles.’
‘You were a wonderful dancer, sweetheart.’ In fact, he had vivid recall of all the men’s eyes on her, while she spun round some ballroom – Larkspur Landing? That red dress with the orange sequins. New Year’s Eve, 1951. Boy, he married a beauty all right.
‘I know.’
