Sounds--a short story

 

 SOUNDS

 

SHE COLLECTED SOUNDS: not ordinary sounds like rain on a roof, but exotic sounds that most people wouldn’t notice like the puff of a breaking pimple.

Each sound had a code. She kept records in notebooks, hundreds of notebooks. They were all the same, black and white marbling and printed label that said: “This notebook belongs to_______” On each of them she had printed Heather Davis and the dates that she had started and finished. They were filed in chronological order on the bookshelves of her rented room. Each page’s entries were aligned, each letter, each number the same size.

She’d started her collection at 18 with ordinary sounds, a singing bird, the dishwasher filling. It wasn’t too long before her parents died. They had gone to their graves convinced that she’d never be able to care for herself. Heather had proven them wrong.

She thought that she had a wonderful job delivering mail at a bank, a few blocks from her room. It was more than a job; it was one of her careers. The creak of the left cartwheel that she used for the white external and brown internal envelopes was recorded in her 87^th notebook. Her left made a 6E yellow, but the right was 7E-Yellow.

Her favorite stop was the Mortgage Department. Alan, the manager, always smiled and thanked her when she placed the mail in his in-box. She thought she might be in love with him, but she knew he had a girlfriend. He kept her picture on his desk. The same blond lady sometimes stopped at the bank to borrow the keys to his car, a red two-seater.

That car was the kind that made people turn their heads when he drove by. The sound of the engine turning over was coded as 17J-Green. She rushed out one night to listen as Alan was leaving. She stood behind a large rock and first heard a key click 9P-Purple, followed by a rev 17Q-Teal. The engine hum was a 2J-Aqua.

The same night when she entered her daily sounds, she pretended she was riding in his car, a multi-colored scarf held in her hand blowing out the window like she’d seen the blond lady do.

Heather was tired. There had had three mail deliveries to sort instead of the usual two. Many brown envelopes needed to be transported for signatures. She was late delivering the CEO’s mail. His secretary had frowned at her.

Ten minutes before she was due to leave, the heavens opened. Lightning. Thunder. She didn’t chronicle those sounds any more.

She started her three-block trot home.

“Heather?”

She turned. Alan held his car door open. Should she get in? Wet his upholstery?

“Hurry! You’re drenched. You’ll catch cold.”

She didn’t need a second invitation. The interior was more beautiful than she imagined. The dashboard was polished wood. The seats were butter-soft beige leather. Her hand stroking it made a 22N-Lilac. She wasn’t sure of the hue because of the engine’s noise.

“Do you live far?”

“Oak Street. “

The traffic was so heavy the car sat immobile, imprisoned in traffic. She didn’t care. She was next to him. She could pretend she was the blond lady. Too bad she couldn’t hold her scarf out the window, but it would get wet.

The light changed. Alan could only move three-car lengths before the signal turned red. Still, all too soon they pulled up in front of her rooming house.

“Do you want to come in? I’ve new Girl Scout cookies. Chocolate mint.” If he said yes, she could show him her notebooks. He would be the first person to see them. She suspected he never thought she had any interests besides her banking career.

Those notebooks were her legacy to humanity, a complete encyclopedia of noise, but she couldn’t say, “Do you want to see my legacy to humanity.”

“I’d love to, but I’m already late. Daphne will kill me.” Then he looked at her face. “If you have any left, perhaps you can bring them to work tomorrow for coffee break.”

“Oh, yes.” Heather jumped from the car, forgetting to thank him for the ride.

After she dried off, she took her notebook and her multi-colored felt tipped to write down the day’s sounds. Maybe when she was famous for categorizing the most sounds, Alan might even forget Daphne.

Tomorrow she would show him a notebook.

On the way to work the next day she stopped to buy napkins with yellow roses. Although she saw a yellow candle, she thought it would be too much for a coffee break.

At 9:55 she ran upstairs to his office with the cookies and napkins. Because he was with a client, she waited.

When he came out the door, he shook the man’s hand.

“Heather?” He sounded surprised.

“I brought the cookies.” She held up the bag. “And pretty napkins.”

He looked confused and then glanced at his watch. “Ok. We’ve time before my next appointment. I’ll get my secretary to bring us some coffee.”

Heather wanted to dance. “I’d rather have milk.” She arranged three napkins: one for him, one for her and one in the middle where she placed the cookies in a circle.

Never had cookies tasted so good. Within two days she’d ridden in his car, and they were now eating together. Maybe he would forget Daphne.

A knock on the door (9K-Brown) wasn’t worth entering. She had knocks on wood, glass and metal. She tried to think of ways to show him the sound notebook she’d stuffed in the bag with the cookies and napkins.

Daphne opened the door. “Hello Darling. I was downtown and wondered if you were free … Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know …”

He stood up and introduced them. Heather’s mouth was stuffed with cookies. She shouldn’t talk with her mouth full.

“Alan has told me about you.” Daphne held out her hand.

Heather felt warm inside. He cared enough to mention her to others. She took Daphne’s hand, even if her fingers had chocolate on them. Daphne reached for a napkin.

Heather reached for the napkin at the same time upsetting her milk over Alan’s papers. The sound of the glass hitting the desk was a 14Z-Black.

“Oh, how clumsy,” Daphne said.

“It’s all right Heather.” Alan grabbed several napkins to mop up the milk. “Look. Nothing’s run.”

“Your papers. They’ll smell sour,” Daphne said.

“I’ll print new ones. “If you had to spill milk, that was the best place, Heather.”

Heather knew she was blushing as she backed out of the room. In the ladies room she washed the tears from her face.

Her supervisor came looking for her. “Anything wrong?”

Heather shook her head.

“You’d better get back to work.”

Heather never wanted to go back to the Mortgage Department, but her notebook was still there. It was too valuable to abandon.

She put the interoffice envelopes in Paul Graves’s basket. As she passed Alan’s secretary’s desk, she overheard her talking to Daphne. “He really shouldn’t encourage her.” The milk-stained papers were in the trash.

“Alan always takes in strays,” Daphne said. Even his dog was a stray found along the road. At least he won’t bring her home.” They both looked up and saw her.

Am I a stray, Heather wondered? No, I have a home.

Alan opened his door. The notebook was in his hand. “I’m glad you came back. You forgot this.” He handed it to her.

His big smile didn’t melt her this time. He was only being nice to her because he felt sorry for her, she thought. He had no right.

She was as good as he was.

Better maybe.

She had two careers: he had only one. She hugged the notebook to her chest. Nothing mattered. She had her life’s work. When she was famous, she would show them all.

Treason Jan. 6th

 

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the insane one.

I always thought people who tried to overthrow a government were traitors and committed treason to that government.

Of course, there are those who would say they are patriots. I suppose it depends if they are successful or not. Like those Brits that fought their fellow Brits in April 1776.

At the highest level, prior to January 6, 2021, many at top echelons of government were trying to subvert the Constitution by nullifying the legal and honest election results, the will of the people. An unelected president would have occupied the office had they succeeded.

The wife of a Supreme Court Justice swallows a lie about election fraud and talks to top White House people about over throwing the elected president. I can't believe her husband knew nothing. If he didn't say anything, than he was an accessory to treason.

Unlike in 1776, the Jan. 6 grievances were not based on reality. 

So suggesting overturning a legal election based on lies, seems wrong.

 But people don't seem to want to call it for what it is. 

Treason.

A wind plus other phenomena.

 

The three months I was in Geneva, I was hoping for snow, although we were able to go to it in St. Moritz. Before we left, the Sahara wind blew in covering everything. I'm sure if it were gathered up in one pile it would make a respectable beach.

We come to the south of France and it snows in Switzerland.

I find bad weather (in limited doses) far more interesting than good weather.

April 1 (Fool's Day) the Tramontane made it's appearance taking temperatures down so low I felt more like I was in Boston in January between blizzards. A friend said the with the wind chill factor it was like -39° although they didn't specify Fahrenheit or Centigrade. It doesn't matter what the thermometer read. It was and is BLOODY COLD.

The Tramontane was blowing so hard, if I'd not held on to anything I could grab, I could have been blown off my feet. One Tramontane, when I was undergoing chemo six years ago, blew my wig off my head and up the street. Kids watched with their mouths open. We ran after it to retrieve it.

The Tramontane comes from the north on the Mediterranean and is dry and cold and picks up force into Languedoc, Roussillon and Catalona. As the worse blizzards in Boston tend to go out to sea, pick up water and come back to add snow on the snow.

Tramontanes are caused by a pressure difference between high pressure cold air systems over the Atlantic with a low pressure system from the Med. The locals say it usually lasts three, six or nine days.

On day two we visited a friend with a view of the Med. The white caps went as far as we could see and were higher and more constant than ever I'd seen them.

Supposedly the winds can drive one mad. 

Today would have been the fourth day. The wind was closer to normal. People were sitting in sidewalk cafés. No one of my acquaintances went mad.

Maybe now the weather will act like its April.

 

Chatterlots

 

My grandmother belonged to a group called the Chatterlots, and they did chatter a lot. Eight friends from youth until death. Whenever they got together the laughter, giggling and sometimes tears were not unlike the gaggle of teenagers I sat next to at Starbucks in Geneva last month.

Their get-togethers would look like a period drama from the late 1800s as they arrived dressed in their hats and gloves even into the late sixties. I would never have asked, but I bet most of the eight women wore corsets rather than bras. They would be far more utilitarian than the one in the photo above.

At one point, these women, who considered travel a trip to Cape Cod or Franconia Notch in New Hampshire. took a train to from Boston to Washington D.C. where the alternated short sheeting beds, in their hotel with visits to historic places.

I remember one of their meetings at our house. Rather than serve the usually tea and treats, my mother helped my grandmother put together an ice cream buffet with strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream, bananas, nuts, chocolate sauce and hot butterscotch sauce, an ice cream bar so to speaking.

"Ladies, let's go into the bar," my grandmother said.

"Bar," came the horrified voices. Having lived through the turn of the 20th century, the battle for the vote, Spanish Flu, WWI, the depression, WWII, Korea they were still convinced FDR was a disaster and prohibition was the right thing to do.

Relief when they saw the spread and the various sundaes and banana splits were made and consumer admid ohs and ahs.

Maybe they never made the transition to modern times, but they had something women have needed and relied over centuries -- friendship.

Gas rationing, etc.

 

In WWII, both my uncle and my father were salesmen and needed to visit clients. With gas rationing, they very carefully figured who they had to see, mileage and how much gas they needed etc. They even arranged sometimes to combine locations of their visit and use one car.

My grandmother reused aluminum foil (I still do) and when it became to small or tattered rolled in a ball to give back so it could be reused for the war effort.

 Butter was almost impossible to get. We had oleo packages. It was my job to press the red dot in the center until the white glop became butter-yellow.

The war ended. My grandmother, brother, mother and I would be able to hop into the car for a Sunday drive without thinking about the gas rationing cards. We had real butter again. My grandmother was still frugal when it came to things like aluminum. She never said, "waste not, want not" but lived it.

We could use some of that frugality today. We could use gas rationing in stead of screaming for the pumping of more fossil fuels. Car pooling, doing errands with a neighbor, buying smaller, hybrid of electric cars. Walking, biking, public transportation are all alternatives depending on where one lives. 

We don't have to buy buy buy running up our debts and limiting other life choices because of it.

In WWII people pulled together against a common enemy. No one said, "I won't pull my blackout curtains down. It's my right to leave them up." They knew that a bomb on their house could take out the neighborhood. 

So with climate change and the war, we need to stop saying, I want what I want when I want it. Not only would that limit the minerals all of which are limited either by availability of trade, needed for modern life, it would put one back in control of their finances.

I still find it hard to understand why people need storage units or houses are so cluttered with things they never use.

Maybe we will never get back to gas rationing cards like the one showed above, but it would be a solution to the over consumerism that grips the world today. 

And maybe, just maybe, should we try and think about how actions don't affect just us, but everyone if not directly than indirectly.

 

NEVER TOO OLD

Third Prize

Festival of the Arts Literary Competition 1994

 

 THE BUZZ OF the doorbell makes me spill my tea. I always say things like, “I wouldn’t have broken the saucer if you haven’t left it on the edge of the table.” It’s a bad habit, blaming others for my faults. I’m working to correct it.

I head for the intercom.

“Hello.”

“Jess, it’s me. Diane. Let me in. Quick!” My sister pronounces her name Deehanne or at least she has since she married Yves-Pierre five years ago. Diane or Deehanne is a world class flouncer. I wonder where she developed it.

“Want tea?” I ask.

“I suppose.” She follows me to the kitchen. I pour two cups from the pot I made and nuke them in the microwave. I nuke all my food since Zach gave me the new microwave for Christmas last year. Both he and Sandy, tease me that I should turn the stove into a planter. By the time the timer dings, I’ve wiped up the spill.

Diane seats herself on a kitchen chair in the center of the bay window. The winter sun makes a halo around her brown curls.

She fiddles with the spoon and picks up the copper sugar bowl, studying the crystals before stirring in a half spoonful. After she adds milk, we watch the white swirl through the brown liquid.

Diane sighs.

I say, “Why do I think something is wrong.”

“Don’t be sarcastic Jess. You’re always sarcastic.”

I try to look innocent. I’ve never mastered innocence just as I’ve never overcome my clumsiness.

“We’ve got a problem, Jess.”

“Who’s we? You and me? Yves-Pierre and you, Zach and …”

“Come off it. It’s Mother?”

“What’s happened to her? I talked to her yesterday. She sounded fine.”

“It’s not her health. It’s worse.” Diane buries her head in her hands. My sister has always been dramatic. As a teenager a pimple brought on a three-act opera. Even last year she wore mourning for three months when her cat died. “Where’s Zach?” She sighs again.

I tell her my husband is with patients. He spends half his time doing charity work, half in an uptown office. It’s a compromise between social responsibility and greed I find appealing. He’s my second husband. “Do you need him for something to do with Mother?”

Before Diane can answer, the key clicks in the front door. Sandy follows Amadeus, our dog, into the kitchen. He’s part poodle and part question, white immediately after his bath and dirty gray the rest of the time. He’s gray now.

Amadeus jumps on my lap and licks my face. He acts as if we’ve been separated for days instead of 40 minutes. Diane looks disgusted as if his mouth contained raw sewerage.

Sandy takes a Coke from the fridge. It’s opening fizz echoes Diane’s next sigh.

“What’s happening, Aunti Di.” Sandy never liked the pronunciation Deehanne so she sidesteps it. I did point out that it was no sillier than when she spelled her name Sandi in her 13^th year with little hearts over the i. As Sandy walks by, she drops a kiss on the top of my head but when I respond, she holds up her hand.

“Parent breath.” It’s a joke between us. I call her Brace Breath. My daughter disappears into the bowels of her room. Like most teenagers’ bedrooms, hers should be condemned by the board of health.

“Get back to Mother, Diane.” I pour more tea, forgetting it’s cold. My sister doesn’t notice.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Try the beginning.”

Diane pulls off the sweater she bought at the Icelandic import store where she loves to shop. She gave me a similar one last year for my 39^th birthday.

Her brown cords make her look really skinny. She’s on some diet where she has lost 15 pounds. We’d gone to the movies on her banana and milk day, and she’d come armed with seven bananas to replace popcorn. I hate admitting it: she has more will power than I do.

“I went over there today to take her to lunch. A surprise you know. The soup and salad place where she likes the black bread with cumin seeds. Anyway, I let myself in the back door and went right to the bathroom.”

When we were growing up, we always used the back door. The backroom was across from the rear entrance. Diane had/has the world smallest bladder.

“Mother wasn’t in the kitchen. I knew she was home. Her coat and purse were on the rack. I called out. No one answered.” She looks at me drawing out the drama.

I lean forward so she’ll continue.

“I’ll be right back. I gotta pee.” When she returns, she draws a breath. “I went upstairs and that’s … that’s … that’s where I found them.” She pauses waiting for me to speak.

I know if I don’t follow her script, I’ll never learn the whole story. “Them?”

“Mother. In bed. With a man.”

“Better than a woman,” I say.

Diane’s voice drips horror, shock, disbelief. “Our Mother. Your Mother. In bed with a man. Don’t you understand?"

“Was she enjoying it?”

“I didn’t ask. I told her she was awful, immoral. I came over here. What will we do?”

Sandy comes back into the kitchen and opens the fridge. The way she eats she should weight a ton. She must have her father’s metabolism. She makes her favorite sandwich — peanut butter and bologna. I refuse to make them. Makes me gag.

“Your Mom and I are having a grown-up conversation, Sweetie.”

My daughter opens the fridge again and gets a glass of milk.

“Brace Breath. Your aunt found Nana in bed with a guy.”

“Way to go, Nana!”

We’ve always had a very open relationship about sex, my daughter and me. Before she got her period we dipped tampons into a glass of water to see which brand was best.

About the same time Zach, Sandy and I rented the video Terms of Endearment. In one scene Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger lie on their stomachs discussing lovers.

I’d been on the couch with my head on Zach’s lap. My teddy bear husband leaned over and whispered, “I can see you and Sandy doing that in a few years.”

Imitating Zach’s tone, Sandy whispered back, “Me too.”

“Neither of you realize that Mother is almost 73,” my sister says.

“I suppose it’s like riding a bike. You never forget how,” Sandy says.

Diane and I both look at her.

“It’s just a guess. I’m still a virgin.”

“I’m glad,” I say. I am.

“I don’t understand you two. Sandy’s too young for this conversation and Mother … wells she certainly is too old to be doing what she’s doing.” Diane puts her hands on top of her head as if she’s afraid the top will blow off. “I just had a terrible thought. What if he’s after his money?”

“He’ll be disappointed.” Papa had left her with enough that she didn’t have to watch every penny but keep her eye on her nickels.

“She insisted we be so straight. Remember the Easter I brought Jonathan home. We were living together. You think she’d have let us share a room, but ohhhh no.” Diane’s voice still bears anger from so long ago.

“That was Papa not Mother. She went along with him for peace.” This is my part of the script. In my role as older sister, Mother often consulted me about how to handle Diane. Not that Mother needed it. She’d been a good parent running interference between her offspring and husband whose favorite saying was “My girls will never …”

Of course we’d done many of the nevers.

When I was 19 and in love with Leon, a Communist, my Mother welcomed him, fed him, asked his opinion on issues while Papa grew redder and redder. Papa wanted to call the police, FBI and CIA. Mother’s calm prevailed. In a way, I’m sorry that Papa didn’t live to learn Leon owns a Mercedes dealership now.

On the day of Papa’s funeral, Mother and I spent more energy controlling Diane’s hysteria than we did on our own grief. Yves-Pierre drove my sister home before the burial. Later I watched her stroke the casket of her life’s partner. For all their differences they loved each other. Deeply.

“Papa’s been gone three years. If Mother had died first, I’m sure he’d have been remarried by now. Women mourn. Men replace.

“I’m not getting any help here.” Diane grabs her coat and beret. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.” She slams the door.

“Wow!” Sandy says. “She was mad.”

Diane will go home. In a couple of days, I’ll phone. She’ll use her icicle voice. After that she’ll call me, and we’ll pretend nothing happened. It’s happened so many times, the pattern is boring.

I call Mother. “Hello, Mother,” I say when she answers.

“By any chance have you talked to your sister?” she asks.

I tell her I have.

“Are you mad at me too?”

“Not at all. Want to talk about it?” She used to ask me the same question. Now I’m doing it to her.

“Oh Jess, he’s so nice. He bought violets for my coat when we went to church last week. You know, where they sell them in Copley Square?”

I did know. I picture mother standing in her charcoal coat she bought at Jordan Marsh. A man, his back to me, pins a bouquet on her lapel.

“Don’t tell Diane that. She’ll think I sold myself for a bunch of flowers.”

Sandy mouths, “Is Nana okay?”

I nod yes.

He tells me about her friend. He sounds nice. She sounds happy.

“Did I do wrong, Jess?”

I think of all the lovers I had after my divorce before I met Zach. I think of all the pleasure I’ve had in bed. I think of Sandy’s reaction.

“Way to go Mother.”

Cergy-Pontoise

It was in the mid 1970s and I was in the Paris apartment of French friends. We'd just has a wonderful meal of rabbit. The carrots served with it, were some of the best I've ever eaten, but I wasn't surprised. Odile could make a gourmet meal out of anything.

They showed me a brochure of the town of Cergy-Pontoise, where they planning to move. I would visit them there in the future and then in the late 1980s I would go with Michel as he signed to the papers to sell the apartment.

Now in 2022, as I'm in bed reading The New Yorker's 7 February 2022 edition, I'm fascinated by an article about a French film maker who lives in Cergy. It was déjà view back to that discussion in Paris so long ago. They wrote...

"Before Cergy-Pointoise existed Bernard Hirsch, the engineer in charge of the project gazed out at what was then a chaotic patchwork of small farms and market gardens. Already he dreamed that it would someday be a town with a 'personality' of its own...Hirsch embraced what he called the Donogoo Method: to create the city by making people believe it exists."

I had to smile. Growing up, I tell people, my mother acted as if you left our town, you fell off the edge of the world. Many decades later, I can pick The New Yorker, read about a small town near Paris, from my bed in Southern France after coming back from three months in our main home in Geneva, Switzerland along the lake. As my mother would have said, "Who'd have think it?" 

And I didn't fall off the edge of the earth either.

TR words

 7:21 a.m.

My husband I were curled up in bed reading. The dog was between us. Rain played a beat on the skylight. I was sipping my tea and we shared a chocolate biscuit -- my husband and I, not the dog.

Mornings like this, as the MasterCard ad, says are priceless. We share certain things from what we read, plan the day, enjoy being. Yesterday this was one of our conversations.

Rick: Trump says the doesn't know what a burner phone is. John Bolton said he discussed burner phones with him.

Me: The letters TR are about the only connection TRump has with TRuth.

Rick: Other TR words?

Me: TReason, TRaitor, TRouble.