They May Not Mean To, But They Do

32

Joy looked out her window and felt an affinity for the ugly March street and the ugly March sky. Even her heart felt ugly, especially her heart, dusty and empty except for the shaky memories scattered around like sticks of broken furniture. She was physically ugly, too, listless skin sagging at her jaw, red-rimmed eyes — she examined her face in the mirror and took a certain satisfaction in its fall from beauty. It was the only power she seemed to have anymore — the power to deteriorate. Her hair was too long, too thin, scraggly and white like a witch’s hair, and there was a long white hair on her chin. Her clothes, which had once charmed and fascinated her, now sulked in the closet, a closet that had no light. She tried a flashlight. It was too heavy for her, twisting her wrist so painfully she grabbed at the doorframe to keep her balance. Everything was too heavy for her these days, even the clothes themselves. Those she extracted were random and old, decades old. Excellent quality, she could still appreciate that. Pity they didn’t fit, pity about the moth holes, pity about so many things. She lost weight, something that automatically pleased her, until she remembered that she’d lost the weight because of illness, stress, old age. Her good Italian knit pants fell right down to her feet, like a clown’s pants in the circus, like Aaron’s pants, a thought that made her sit on the edge of the bed, that made the room spin. Usually she ended up wearing the same gray sweatshirt, the one Aaron had worn, and a pair of black jersey pants she’d gotten at the Gap, although the drawstring was tied in an inextricable knot.

She sat at the table not even bothering to look at the car lights outside. Lou Barney, Lou Barney, who the hell was Lou Barney? The iPad only wanted to play Lou Barney, flashing his name on the screen. Joy had never heard of him. Why did Molly and Danny ever get her this thing? It was very generous of them, but it always wanted to play Lou Barney, and then wouldn’t even play him, whoever he was. Joy shook the iPad. She was just about to call Molly when she decided to try one more time. She changed glasses and tapped the screen.

It wasn’t Lou Barney. It was Low Battery.

I really cannot take much more of the modern world, she thought. I really cannot.

Soon after Lou Barney, Molly came for a week, by herself. Joy was still coughing, but the bronchitis was mostly gone. She had not gotten pneumonia.

“That’s wonderful, Mom. You look so much better than I expected. You’re so independent.”

Joy said, Yes, I am. She did not say, Thank god you’re here, Molly, I could not have taken one more minute on my own, I’m so weak I can hardly lift my toothbrush.

She took a walk with Molly and tried not to lean on her arm.

“Mom? Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

“It’s the weather,” Joy said.

Molly took her arm gently. “I’m glad you’ve taken such good care of yourself.”

“Danny did what he could,” Joy said. “And now you’re here.”

She felt Molly stiffen, for just a split second. Then Molly stopped and wrapped her arms around her. Joy’s face was pressed uncomfortably against the zipper of her daughter’s coat.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Joy said.

Molly laughed. “I should hope not.”

It was about a month later that Joy was finally able to force herself to go back to work. She took a cane. Her bags seemed heavier than ever, but the weather was better, no snow, no rain, just a vicious wind. Gregor got her a cab. She immediately began to worry about whether she’d be able to get a cab home. It would be too windy to wait for the bus even with the cane. The cane had four little feet and a dirty white stripe where someone had torn off the adhesive tape on which the name Aaron Bergman had been scrawled in black Sharpie. I should have gotten him a nicer cane, she thought. How could I have let him walk around with this?

She typed some figures into the computer. The screen shuddered and suddenly there was something different on it. What had she done?

What had she done? What was she doing? Why was she here? These were vast questions that had become horribly small and specific to her. It was hard to remember exactly what she had done earlier in the day. It was hard to focus on what she was doing at that moment. It was hard to understand why she was in this windowless, airless closet.

She tried to concentrate on the report on the air quality necessary for new display cases. She pulled a bottle of water from one of her bags, but she could not unscrew the cap. She glanced at a study of formaldehyde in enclosed environments. She wondered if she was breathing formaldehyde in the enclosed environment that was her office.

She leaned back and looked up. There were several missing ceiling tiles near the light, as well as some wires left hanging from a wall socket. She had filled out all the forms for maintenance, but then she’d been told it would take weeks for anyone to get to it. “Volatile Organic Compounds,” she typed, a term for hydrocarbon gases.

When a workman passed she went to the door and hailed him like a cab. He was a lovely man, happy to help her, very sympathetic, even when he had to go and get a ladder. The room had such high ceilings — it was higher than it was wide, higher than it was long. He came back and set up his ladder and fixed everything just like that, one, two, three. He had a daughter in high school. They chatted about the cost of college as he hung her posters.

Then Miss Georgia whisked by the open doorway and, like a character in a cartoon, backed up, demanding to know what was going on. The workman, whose name was Marlon, winked at Joy and slid out the door. Miss Georgia watched him go with a disapproving look, then turned to Joy. “Chop-chop,” she said. “We have work to do.”

“Excuse me?”

Miss Georgia clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher. “Chop-chop.”

“Chop-chop?” Joy said, thinking of all the years she had worked to get her master’s degree and then her Ph.D., thinking of her training and all her experience, all the years she had worked at this museum before Miss Georgia even knew how to spell museum. Chop-chop? “I’m sorry, but what is it you think I’m doing if not working?”

It was the slight smirk that appeared on the director’s face that pushed Joy over the edge.

“Why don’t I just stick a broom up my ass and sweep the floor, too?” she said.

Now she lowered her head to the shiny white top of the drawerless desk and did not move for what seemed like a long time. She pictured the director’s face after her outburst: truly shocked. Joy wanted to laugh, but she was too tired. The surface of the table was cool and soothing on her forehead. When she lifted her head, the windowless room spun around her like a merry-go-round and the director seemed to be back in her doorway, a file in her hand.

“I’ve been knocking for quite a while,” Miss Georgia said.

Joy stared at her.

When Joy still did not speak, Miss Georgia added, “Yes. The less said the better.” Miss Georgia held up a hand, traffic-cop-like, then dropped a thick manuscript on Joy’s desk. “Your recommendations for the photographic collection.”

Joy pulled it toward her.

“Because you were ill,” Miss Georgia said, “we decided to help you out.”

Joy started to ask why they thought she needed help on that particular report, which was, after all, finished.

“No, no, don’t thank me,” Miss Georgia interrupted. “Not necessary. We got some excellent outside help on the project.”

“But I—”

“Say no more.” Miss Georgia put her finger to her lips.

Joy flipped through the manuscript, a comprehensive guide to protecting the museum’s photographs in their new location that she’d worked on for months before the move.

“We read your report, of course,” the director said. “But under the circumstances, we felt it would be prudent to hand the project over to outside sources.”

Joy’s bags were even heavier going home. The report was hundreds of pages long. She put it in the red bag and clutched it to her side. When she finally got a cab, the thought of going home to her empty apartment was too grim. She got off at the coffee shop wondering if they would force her to sit at one of the sad little tables against the wall where all the old widows and widowers sat. She wanted a booth. She wanted to be near a window. She was breathing heavily. It was from anger, of course. Unless she was having a heart attack.

“Joy!” a voice cried out when she got inside, and it was Karl.

She hadn’t seen him since before Aaron died. He had been so kind, sending a lovely note on thick creamy stationery. Beautiful old-fashioned fountain-pen handwriting. It had disturbed her, that familiar handwriting from long ago.

“Joy, I’m so sorry about Aaron. I lost a good friend,” he said when his attendant had lurched out of the booth, offered her seat to Joy, and disappeared into the night. When her waffle came, Joy pulled a brown glass bottle out of one of her bags.

“Maple syrup,” she said. “Real maple syrup. No one serves real maple syrup anymore.”

They talked about Aaron, about his reminiscences about the war, about the pigeons. Joy cried, just for a minute, and Karl handed her a large, clean white handkerchief with his initials monogrammed on it. She hesitated before handing it back and had a flash of memory, another large, clean white handkerchief, no monogram in those days, a fit of sneezing, the embarrassment of handing it back. She looked up. Karl was smiling.

“I remember,” he said.

“Were we on a sailboat?”

He nodded.

“I thought you were very brave to take it back after all that sneezing.”

“I didn’t have much choice.”

She laughed. “I remember thinking it would be very forward of me to keep it. That was the word. ‘Forward.’ Why didn’t I have my own handkerchief? And why do you still use a handkerchief? They’re very unsanitary.”

“You can keep that one.”

“Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t. It’s too beautiful.” She wrapped it in a paper napkin and gave it back to him. Then she ordered a cup of soup, and suddenly, as if she’d known him all her life, which she very nearly had, she began confiding in him, telling him about going back to work, about how awful Miss Georgia had been. She took the report out of the red bag.

“It’s a perfectly good report,” she said. She began leafing through it, nodding approval at her own conclusions. “An excellent report, actually.”

“Joy?”

She had stopped turning the pages. She was staring, riveted, at one page. Then she grinned. “Oh dear,” she said, still grinning. “Oh dearie dear.” Surely that was supposed to say CUNY facilities. Surely that was not supposed to say CUNT facilities.

“Something wrong?” Karl said.

“Oh no,” Joy said. “Just a little typo.”