The Shopper

This story came about when I was watching a shopping station and was tempted to buy a car polisher, and I didn't have a car. Also, among the expat community, some wives have a hard time to adjust. It just seemed a perfect combination for a story. The Shopper was published in a Texan literary magazine in the 1996 and an anthology from Belgium in 1999.

The car fills the TV screen. Half is shined. The other half is wax covered. A polisher sits on the hood. "This polisher is not sold in stores. To order look for the flag of your country," the announcer says. The camera zooms into the shiny surface.

Susan's hand inches toward her telephone. 037 51 75 50. She doesn't need to see the white cross on the red flag. She knows the number by heart, although Switzerland isn't her country. Maine US of A is.

Just as she touches the five she remembers -- she doesn't have a car. Still, Geoff, her husband, had said that morning he might lease one.

He'd sat on their balcony drinking Earl Grey tea from a bowl. He'd stared at the mountains with that vacant look he gets whenever he sees a Jura or an Alp. He'd begun drinking tea from bowls after they'd visited Colette and Jean-Claude's farm. Susan had been shocked, but Colette had explained it was a French habit.

Susan uses her mug that says, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans." She tried switching but each time the bowl grazed her lips she imagined what her mother would say if she were to drink from a bowl.

While Geoff talked about the car, Susan sat wordlessly, her back to the mountains. He said, "If we'd a car you might get out more." She heard the unspoken, "You can't stay home for the next twenty-three months we're in Geneva." He put the bowl next to the roses he'd bought and kissed her goodbye. As he picked up his briefcase he said, "Try and go look at the cars."

She picks up a brochure for a Subaru, 4x4, five forward gears. It is in French. She decides to wait for him to go with her.

She dials 037 51, then stops. If Geoff leases a car the polisher will be handy. Of course, neither of them waxed their last car, a 1989 Colt, nor had they polished their 1985 Escort or their 1977 Pinto.

When those cars had been splashed with mud or coated with dust, they'd driven through a car wash, the kind where heavy cloth strips descend and go whap, whap, whap all around the auto. She would wait on the side with Bark, watching the car go through.

She misses Bark, although her mother writes weekly to report how happy the dog is running around the farm. Susan isn't sure what bothers her more -- that Bark doesn't miss them or that he's at the farm and she isn't.

The car has disappeared from the screen. Putting down the phone, she imagines giving Geoff the polisher the moment he brings a new car home -- if he brings one home. If he doesn't they can take the polisher back to Maine. She wonders how to convince her husband what a good buy it really is.

She pictures him with his lips pursed the way he does each time he discovers she has one again given into television shopping. He'd mocked her after she made her first purchase, a youth kit. That was two weeks after they'd bought the television at Migros.

"We need a TV table. Let's go to IKEA," she said.

"Can't you go during the week. I'd rather go hiking," he said.

She started listing excuses: no one would speak English, she'd get lost, he wouldn't like what she chose.

He threw up his hands. Still, the day had been successful. They'd eaten salmon topped with a fresh dill sprig at IKEA's restaurant. He said for a shopping day, it wasn't all that bad.

When Geoff left for work the Monday after the big shopping trip, Susan had crawled back into bed. As she channel surfed, she took real pleasure in the noise in the apartment. At home her sister, mother, friends and neighbours constantly dropped by. In Geneva she knew no one, although neighbours murmured, "Bonjour" or "Bonsoir" as she scuttled past them.

Suddenly she sat up in bed. She found not one but two English-only channels, each with a shopping program. Then she found a third, Eurosport, which also had a half hour of selling before the step-exercising segment.

After that as soon as her husband left, she'd get a cup of tea and watch television until dinner. One day when Mont Blanc blocked the English-only channels she changed to TF1. Normally French television made her more homesick -- especially if she watched Murder She Wrote, which was on almost every day. It didn't seem right for Angela Lansbury to babble in French.

A French woman who looked about thirty jabbered away. She was striking in the way of French women. Susan tried to decide what made her look so smart. It was more than the print scarf picking up the colours of her skirt and blouse.

She watched spellbound as the woman loaded gel into a blue plastic phallus then put it in the freezer. Susan wondered if it were an adult Popsicle. A clock moved a half hour, but the real time elapsed was five seconds. The woman took out what must have been a duplicate and rubbed it on her face going into ecstasy.

The host held up a series of cards each with a number. Forty was the first. She shook her head to each until the host held up one saying fifty-one. If gel could take twenty years off the French women's age, Susan knew she must have some to protect her from Geneva pollution so unlike fresh Maine air.

Two weeks later she has her gel and phallic container. She followed the directions exactly looking up each word in the French-English dictionary and writing it in her pink and purple plaid notebook. She felt silly rubbing a blue plastic penis over her face.

The next morning Geoff put on the light to see if by chance he'd missed finding clean underwear. He hadn't. Susan had missed her allotted laundry hour. He forgot about his underwear when he looked at her. "Oh my God. You've got measles."

Jumping out of bed, she ran to the mirror. She had to squat down because it rested on the rug. Geoff said since they'd only be there two years why take the chance that the landlord would keep the deposit because of holes in the walls. So as she hunkered down to look in the mirror, a red and swollen face looked back. "I used a new face cream," she said. The youth kit became a joke.

Geoff hadn't found it as amusing two weeks later when she'd ordered a drill to hang the mirror or when the paint stripper arrived a week after.

"Maybe we'll want to strip some furniture," she said.

He shook his head, the same way he did when the Boston Patriots dropped a really easy catch.

He was so angry when she paid 650 Swiss francs for an oven that looked like a lettuce dryer and cooked by air that he didn't speak to her for two days. But when he found the CDs and DVDs from the Prince's Trust Concerts, he just said, "Why?" making it a four-syllable word.

"You love Eric Clapton. He's in at least three songs and backs up Rod Stewart."

"We don't have a DVD player," he said.

"We can take it home."

"It won't work. The US had a different system."

They bought a DVD player. Eventually, after listening to a Tina Turner-Paul McCarthy duet he said, "OK, I love the CDs, but I still worry about you. At home you always did so much but here..." The phone interrupted.

When Susan bought a tool to add rhinestones to her clothing, she'd kept it a secret. When the VISA bill arrived, she had to show him how she planned to redesign her T-shirts and jeans. He sighed as she brought out all the things that came with set: rhinestone, fake pearls, a hand-held tool and  twenty reusable patterns.

"Susan, you don't even like rhinestones." He'd handed her back the rose pattern she'd given him. As she slipped it in the envelope she dropped the rhinestones. She crawled around the floor picking them up one-by-one. "Maybe I can get a small business going."

"How? You don't go out. You won't even try to learn French?"

"There's the International Club."

"You went once and haven't gone back."

Susan sat Indian-style on the floor, her hand full of rhinestones. She couldn't tell him how uncomfortable the wives made her feel. They were use to living away from home. They spoke French. Susan's ear couldn't distinguish the sounds much less wrap her tongue around them.

Susan decides to buy the polisher, but as she pushes 037, a key clicks in the lock. Since it's two in the afternoon she's surprised to see Geoff. She hangs up before he reaches the bedroom.

"Get packed. We're catching the 16:50 to Paris."

Susan puts on her navy T-shirt dress and ties a scarf in the same way the woman, who wasn't allergic to gel in plastic penises. She puts underwear and her lilac nightie in the overnight bag. Geoff packs his saddlebag that wraps around his briefcase.

"We'll have the weekend to explore. My meeting isn't till Monday." He hugs her.

In the train they go to the dining car, which only sells sandwiches. She doesn't understand how a country with such a wonderful reputation for good food can make such unimaginative sandwiches. She daydreams of chicken tarragon on pita bread. She eats her dried out cheese and her more dried out baguette as the countryside flashes by.

In Paris they stay at the Edouard VII near the Opera. A brass lion in the lobby reminds her of the lions at the Copley Plaza Boston where they'd spent their wedding night.

The room has a king-sized bed. Geoff throws her down and tickles her a prelude to love making. She doesn't come, but she hasn't since they moved. Nevertheless, she feels happy.

Saturday they visit the Louvre. Looking up through the new glass Pyramid they see the old building in the background and fountains in the foreground. Geoff drapes his arm around her shoulder. "Lord, I love living in Europe. I wish we could stay forever." He doesn't feel her shudder.

They ride the escalator to the look down at the top of the pyramid. "I don't like this view," Geoff says. "It clashes with the old buildings."

"Like a pimple on Cindy Crawford's face," she says.

They stop at a brassiere. They sit facing the windows so they can watch people walk by. She orders hot chocolate. He has a Stella & Artois beer.

Outside a crowd gathers to watch a man pretending to be a statue. He wears a white toga, white makeup and white hair powder. Taking ten francs from her wallet, she goes out to put it in his hat. His white bare feet look cold. She wishes she had some white socks to give him.

In the Metro they sit opposite a man talking to himself. About every three words he pulls a face always the same face. Then he folds the corner of his blue overcoat over and over. Frightened, Susan nestles into Geoff.

When he leaves for his meeting, he suggests she visit Notre Dame. She agrees, but instead goes to Bretano's. The English bookstore is two doors from the hotel. She buys a book about the cathedral. When Geoff come back she shows him the book and says, "See what I bought?" without telling where.

*****

Ten years in the future the couple will be back in Maine. They will have three kids. Susan will be busy.

When they entertain, Geoff will sit back in his chair, take a puff on his pipe and say, "Those years in Europe were the best in our lives."

Susan will say nothing. She'll look out the window past the fenced in areas for the horses to the barn where they have the truck, station wagon and company Buick.

A box containing an unused polisher is hidden in the loft. All three of their vehicles will be dirty.

The Pianist

 This story was published in a The Potomac Reviews Fall 1994 and Moments in time from Genoble France 1996.  I was trying to create a character indirectly using details. The idea came to me when I was listening to Nina Simone, although this is definitely not Simone.

Fingers slightly lighter than the half notes caress the keys. The pianist doesn't smell the dust of the theater nor feel sweat dampening her brow. Nor does she hear the stagehands yelling at each other in French as they arrange the orchestra's chairs.

Despite spending 20 years in France, she has never learned the language. Even when she chatted with Jean-Pierre Foucault on Sacred Soirée the night they dedicated their entire program to her she wore an ear piece. A woman backstage translated what was being said into the ear piece. She isn't against learning another language in principle. In reality it would take too much time from her music.

She knows her audiences at Montreux, the North Sea Jazz Festival or her concerts come for music, not chit chat. She never talks to them other than to say merci, danke or whatever polite word is required.

She never plays in the States. She had one hit there in the early sixties. Americans from that time when they discover she plays in Europe say, "Oh, I thought she died."

Her close-cropped hair, once  a political statement, is one less thing to distract her from her playing. Her manager sees it as her trademark. Her last CD cover displayed the silhouette of her head with her nose titled up. Without her name and with the title L'amour toujours it went gold in 22 days.

She has seen many lovers come and go. At first  they were entranced to know the body of a European legend. Then frustrated by her inattention, they faded away.  With an exception or two she never really cared about their departure, missing their bodies in bed more than their demands out of bed.

Her children by her two lovers know their mother more as the woman who phones weekly and visits each April.  "You're ain't takin' our baby traipsing around Europe. That child is staying in the good old US of A." Her mother, called Old Mom, had said firmly after each birth. It suits both women.

She likes her month off from her concert circuit to get reacquainted with her country and children. There are a series of rituals that give her comfort. Each morning her son and daughter crawl into her bed, their three bodies sticky despite the fan rippling the single sheer curtain. Although the kids have grown bigger than their mother, they still wrestle and laugh with her. Sometimes they talk of school and friends, many of whom are the sons and daughters she knew when she went to the same school.

They stay in bed until Old Mom calls them to eat bacon, eggs and grits. At the end of the meal Old Mom clucks as her daughter heads for the piano. "If I'd known you'd be so fanatic I'd never have let you take those lessons." Even as she complains  she  moves the fan from the bedroom to the living room and places fresh wildflowers in a green vase on her daughter's  piano. "How can your mama practise with all that caterwauling?" She says pushing the children out of the room.

That house smells of lavender unlike the Paris theater which carries both the smell of frying onions from the bistro next door and the mustiness of dust accumulated from fifty years of seeping into floor boards and red plush seats.

Tonight hundreds of people will pay 400 FF excluding baby sitters, dinner and parking to hear the pianist. She will play more for herself than or them. She can do it no other way.

Once a reporter from Elle asked her, "Are all your sacrifices for your music worth it?"

She'd  said "I can't answer." She'd meant she could no more change her devotion to music than she could tell her blood to pause ten minutes in her veins. The interviewer had written she was uncooperative.

After that she gave no more interviews. At first her manager begged her to talk to reporters, but he finally realised as her mystique grew, however unintentionally, that it was better the way she wanted it.

She lifts her left hand while her right tinkles the last notes. They fade and die. As her body slumps, she glances up to ask the stagehands to move the piano slightly to the left. They are gone, but she sees she has an audience of one, standing at the opposite end of the stage. "Do you know that song?" she asks the boy standing there.

To escape a shower he'd ducked into a side door and was caught by the music. His jeans and Pink Floyd T-shirt are damp. Because he's a mouth breather with too many allergies and too large adenoids, she can see his top two middle teeth are missing.

He doesn't understand, although he knows she is speaking English. He has never heard music like hers. He listens only to the rock his brother blasts through their apartment while their mother works. It sometimes drowns out the cartoons he wants to watch.

"It's You'll Never Walk Alone," she says.

As the woman holds his eyes prisoner, she sees his confusion. "That's the name of the song I was playing. Come here."

He creeps over as she reaches to take his dirty little hand in hers. He lets her lift him up on the bench between her legs. His sun bleached hair is cut as short as hers except for a few strands braided into a tail at the back of his neck.

"Je veux jouer," he whispers.

She knows what he wants. They squiggle back on the bench. When he looks over his shoulder at her, she smiles and the fears vanishes from his face.

Holding him with her left arm, she takes his right hand in hers but only after fingering his tail. Together, with her manipulating his fingers, they play the first few bars of You'll Never Walk Alone." She stops.

He turns to looks at her. She nods and he picks out the notes on his own. She matches him note for note in the base. She doesn't know she makes him feel the same way his mother does when she pulls the covers up tight around his neck before kissing him good night.

They play the notes over and over. Each time it sounds stronger. From the way his left hand twitches she knows that he wants to try the base. She shows him a few chords, but his hands are too small, too untrained for dexterity. He misses several notes. "Try this," she says and shows him an exercise to limber his hand.

"Irena, you ready? We've got to ring Geneva." A man calls from the rear of the theatre. His face is hidden by shadow, but his jeans and boots are visible. The boy's smile washes from his face.

"Soon Julian." The pianist says to the man. The jeans and boots disappear. With her hands she asks the boy, "You want to play more?"

He nods feeling the vibrations as he gets it almost right. He  wants to do it exactly right. Like her.

"Irena. Come." The man's voice is angry. It's a tone he needs to use to get her from the piano to the other activities she needs to keep her career going. She's easy to manage. Very little alcohol. No drugs. All she asks is one month off a year.

"All right! All right! I'm coming." She closes the piano. Holding out her two fingers, the boy grabs on. He trots along until they reach the stage door where the man waits.

As they leave the theatre a limousine waits in the alley. The driver stands next to the open door. Julian pushes Irena into the back seat.

The connection to the boy breaks.

Before the limo pulls out, she opens the window to wave goodbye.

As she waves she thinks of the first time she ever played the piano.

"He's like me 30 years ago," she says.

Julian tells the car to move on.

Funeral

The trigger for this story was a funeral where the parents were divorced and I watched them come together to bury their adult child in a way they never could have during their marriage. An overwhelming sadness hit me. But like many writers, when we experience emotion, we think how we can bring that emotion to our writing.

He's holding my hand so tight my fingers are numb. I can't believe it's been thirty-five years since our own wedding in this church. I know it has been four years and two months since he plucked my ring from the air. I threw it so hard. I remember the sound ---whoop -- as it landed against his palm. That's the angriest I've ever been. I never thought I'd touch him again.

Her hands are so cold. Always were. Probably always will be. At least her feet no longer stab me awake in the middle of night. Wonder how George feels about having his calves attacked under the covers.

He looks awful. Billy said he'd stopped drinking. I didn't smell anything on his breath. George wanted me to drink a glass of wine before he put me in the limo. I couldn't. I wish he were here, but...

She's aged. Never saw her look so bad. Even when she had the flu or her gall bladder out. I haven't seen her for how long --two, three years? Why the hell can't we start. I'm not sure how long I can hold together.

   

The minister is new. He never met Billy. He said there's a traffic jam across the town. The storm has everything tied up. Listen to the hail beating on the roof. It even drowns out the organ.

               

That boy is late to his own funeral. I can't believe it. No one will joke about it. Not even Dave. He used to say that about Billy. I remember how when our families use to picnic at the lake, we had to wait for that damned kid every time. Even if they sided with her; Dave patted me on the back and Maddy touched my cheek. Meant more to me than all the I'm-so-sorrys that I've heard.

If one more person says, "I think it was Robert Frost who said it's obscene to bury your own child," I'll faint. Thank God. The hearse is here.

               

The minister is like a sheep dog lining us up. Last time I'll ever walk behind my son. Good thing she convinced her mother to stay home. I don't think the old broad could have taken this. Billy could do no wrong in her eyes. He played 'em both like a God damned harp.

               

Thank God, Mother isn't here. At least he's being good. I can't forget, it's his son too. Even if he were so hard on him. Poor Billy. Nothing he did could ever please him. "I am the Resurrection and the Life, who so ever believes in me shall never die." The minister sounds so convinced. I need to hear those words. Billy believed. Only a few more steps and we can sit down.

I remember carrying my father's casket. The weight nearly dented my shoulder. Billy weighed nothing by the time he... She's sagging against me. There, there old girl. Get her into the pew.

He gave me the handkerchief. I'm not going to break down. Billy told me he wanted it to be over. He was ready. 

               

I wish it were me. I've had my life.

               

He's getting up to read his eulogy. I can't believe he wanted to do that. I don't know where he finds the strength.

Look at all the people out there for my son. For her. Not many for me. My fault. It's all my fault. I wish I'd known him better. I couldn't accept the way he lived. We pretended so much didn't exist, and now the time for truth is gone.

                

I'd forgotten he had such a wonderful speaking voice. That's what I fell in love with. And his eyes. They were Billy's eyes. He's talking about the Christmas Billy broke his arm. I didn't think he remembered. 

               

Only a little more to go. My last chance to tell Billy that I loved him, that I'm sorry.

               

I don't ever remember seeing him cry.

She's given me back my handkerchief. I made a fool of myself.

                  

 I need to comfort him. I don't know how. I never did.

               

She's rubbing my back. She use to do that when we were first married and something went wrong. Our whole lives went wrong. You can't fix that with a back rub.

               

               

 "The Old Rugged Cross." Billy sang that solo with the choir two Easters ago. It's over.

               

                

 Here come the pall bearers. It's over. Thank God.