search index
of all issues

Search This Site Enter word(s) to search for:

Jan Johnson
Eat of it and Your Eyes Shall Open

Like hands intertwined, two branches of a pear tree curled together against Portland's morning cold. But the heavy-hipped pears on the more burdened branch pulled the boughs apart. In the wind, the bottom bough sometimes brushed the dark, drenched earth.

Miriam breathed in but couldn't yet smell the sun scent of pears in the drippy fog of daybreak. Anyway, power walking with Denise meant moving too fast past the neighborhood's one remaining orchard to notice anything.

Denise pumped her arms to get the most of her 45 minutes of exercise. "You could just do a dessert party, you know."

"I'm no longer in a financial position to do more than a potluck."

"You could get a keg. That'd be cheaper than bottles."

"I can't afford alcohol at all."

"Thad will suggest a decent wine. Not too expensive."

Miriam remembered the gang's last surprise party - a surprise golf tournament for Denise's husband's 45th birthday. Thad thought he would get in a quick 18 holes before dinner. But Denise had gathered 75 of his nearest and dearest, dressed everyone in matching sweatshirts and set them loose on the links. At 6, they all sat down to salmon in The Atrium.

Talking to Denise depressed Miriam, not because her loss of status was humiliating (although it was), but mostly because Miriam herself had behaved just as thoughtlessly when she was a Junior League wife, three months age. She too resented potlucks. Three months ago, she would have said nobody will come. They come to parties only to network and eat. They expect good food and don't want to buy it themselves. She would have said exactly the same, shameful things Denise was saying.

Denise's perky pageboy bounced with each step. "You probably could make it cheaper by doing it 'no kids.'"

"How do we go about that?"

Denise suggested some phrases to include on the invitation. To Miriam, they all sounded like "leave your grubby little rugrats home. Just bring a present." She didn't have children and she was offended.

"I'll think about it."

***

Since Edmund left, Miriam found herself drawn to a woman she used to consider a yahoo. Stanza wore hats and did all her volunteer work for agencies that couldn't do a thing for her husband's career. Then shortly after Stanza turned 40, Stanza's lawyer-husband ran off with a floozy from word processing. At the time, the women patted Stanza's shoulder and clucked their brand of comfort.

"Just a gold digger."

"Too bad he's already made partner. They'd never let him in with her."

"You're lucky you kept your job. It fills your time. I mean, you don't golf."

But everybody knew Stanza needed her job because she needed money. Like Miriam, Stanza now lived alone in a big, unfriendly house with an equally big, unfriendly house payment. "For sale" signs perched in both yards. Technically, they were competitors in the real estate market but Miriam couldn't think about that. She didn't need a competitor; she needed a friend.

For Miriam, the last of the money market fund went for insurance on the Mercedes. Apparently, it was a buyer's market for luxury cars too. She sat home on Saturday but not one caller responded to the ad.

She still had her gallery job, of course. Serge knew art and Misha knew artists, but only Miriam knew the buyers. But no gallery job could sustain this lifestyle. The sagging sense of foreboding did not go away no matter how many M&M's she ate.

She munched the crunchy candies while she dialed Stanza. "You had any calls on yours?"

"Not one."

"God I don't want to go bankrupt."

"It's like a mantra with you. 'godIdon'twanttogobankrupt, godIdon'twanttogobankrupt.' Back in Texas, we did this little thing with our hands. People always thought it meant 'hook 'em horns.' Really it was 'we're going Chapter 11.'"

"Don't make jokes."

"What else can I do? Back in Texas, people had a better attitude about boom and bust. They had more experience."

"Then why don't you go back to Texas?" She regretted it the instant she said it and apologized.

"Girl, you are losing your sense of humour."

"I'm losing the house. If I don't sell the Mercedes, I won't make the mortgage this month. I may not even be able to pay my lawyer."

"I thought Thad was going to carry you for a few months?'

"Thad? Puleeze!"

"Well, you are his wife's best friend."

Miriam shrugged. "The more people I meet, the more I like you."

***

When Miriam ran out of M&M's, she scurried to the grocery store to restock, her head down to shield her face from the rain. A rustle preceded a surprise of feathers, followed by the thumping of wings. In an orchard full of ripening life, her eye failed to see any one thing - even something as remarkable as a princely crowned quail. She stared at the bush, empty now of quail but full of rose hips dripping like blood. Behind the wind, she heard the pat of rain on fallen leaves.

***

Under the harsh overhead light in Safeway, she tried to blink him away but her past walked up to her. He'd thickened with the passage of decades but not badly; he just wasn't so skinny anymore. And he looked nothing like her ex, even though at one time she had compared them.

"Remember when I came by your house under the ruse of collecting leaves?" He lifted his eyebrows. "For biology class?"

She looked away. "We needed leaves."

"We could get leaves anywhere. I wanted to collect them with you. In the orchard."

Her old friend was buying M&M's too and she wondered why he needed them. He pounded a cigarette out of a pack and waved it in the air while he told her about properties he'd developed. She didn't remember him talking this much. She wanted him to stop enumerating his net worth so she didn't have to pity him. She knew that "ownership" usually was a euphemism for "debt." Before he could complete his resume, a Safeway clerk silenced him by announcing that this was a nonsomking facility.

Her face wrinkled with compassion. "I read about you in the papers."

"Simple misunderstanding among business partners. The press got it wrong. There was no actual jail time."

"I'm glad." She meant it.

"Anyway, I've wanted to buy in the old neighborhood for a long time. My parents never could. Now I own most of it. Or have the option. I live in the big Tudor on 54th."

"Want another? Mine's for sale. In fact, you could buy two?"

He smiled. Not that old flash of a grin but one that sat on his face too long, looking slick. "Last I heard you were sailing yachts with some doctor."

"I used to do that. I don't do that any more."

"You still paint?"

"No." She thought she would. She and Edmund even remodeled a bedroom into a studio, but the Symphony Associates tore off so many days and then she ended up on that committee to choose art for the new wing of the hospital.

"And you? Did you ever get to travel?"

He shook his head and the movement contrasted with that stuck-on smile. "What can I say? You grow up, get kicked out of the house and crawl along on your belly trying to make a living. I try to get away but you get shackled to property."

She looked down, half-expecting to find scale-models of condos, warehouses and mini-malls chained to his ankles.

***

Miriam's extra-extra-large bag of M&M's crinkled in a plastic sack as she raced a cloudbank home. But all hurry dissolved at the orchard. Her feet stubbornly sucked her through the mud. The branch had broken off from wind and weight. Its pears rotted in the wet grass, sunburnt side down.

Suddenly, she was transported to the dawn of her womanhood - the teen years. She felt the heaviness of old people and sleep and rain, of union and communion, although he had not been heavy back then. He had not held her hands in love. He held her body, her back, pulling her to him, cushioning her slender shoulder blades from the cold earth with his hands. Afterwards, he never bragged to his pals, improving his reputation by destroying hers.

But he sent no love letters. No Valentines. No birthday cards. He didn't jot banalities on the backs of school portraits.

That may have been their undoing for she needed some kind of written documentation, some incriminating evidence of conventional courtship to feel secure. This unwooing left nothing behind except their co-conspiracy in exalted moments.

Once, in a fit of adolescent pique, she destroyed the only thing she liked about herself. She cut her glorious chestnut hair to what she thought would be a fashionably short length. In tears, she called him and they met again under the pear tree. He twined his long fingers in hers and told her it would grow back. But they did not make love that time because, in her teenage turmoil over her hair, she forgot to change into fancier panties. She felt self-conscious in white cotton briefs rather than sexy, satin bikini - style pants. Anyway it was Saturday. She needed to get ready for a date.

By her junior year of high school, she dated only college boys. After college, she married her med student, hung up her paintbrushes and put Edmund through eight more years of school. For her efforts, she was now the ex-wife of a proctologist.

Under the tree with the smell of decaying pears, she wanted to brushstroke out the hair mousse and wasted Saturday nights securing a date with Anybody Important.

She never told him that when she made love with him she felt love for him. It had nothing to do with expectations or payoffs or hope for the future. It was just love. She couldn't think of a way to make that sound better. Not so belittling. Just love.

***

The past is a picture that can get smaller or bigger. At home, eating M&M's, she squeezed history down to a few hard truths. Then she nursed a fantasy that he was in a coma and she could tell him these hard truths. The way he talked now, he'd have to be unconscious for her to get a word in.

Then she had a fantasy about him coming to the gallery. She pictured him telling Serge and Misha about his new mini-mall. In her mind's eye, her bosses nodded politely then, later at home sipping cognacs, convulsed with laughter over "Miriam's bourgeois boyfriend."

She needed to talk to someone. Right now. She called Stanza.

"So? Did you pounce on each other like sex-mad ferrets?"

"We were in Safeway!"

"Which aisle?"

"We bought M&M's and left."

"Too bad. You could have wandered back to your little Garden of Eden and recreated the past. In AA, we call it a relapse."

"How are you doing?'

"I'm clinically depressed and financially insolvent. Other than that, I'm fine."

***

The next morning Miriam woke up with an animal inside her. Possibly a ferret. An insistent ferret. She thought of calling him but what would she say? "I ache for you. I yearn for you. This is Miriam, by the way."

But she didn't love him! He developed mini-malls and gloated about it. He started out timid and sweet and turned smug and grasping. That's the problem with adulthood; a lifetime of actions precluded her from giving him the benefit of the doubt. And vice versa! It was better when they were young and innocent and had no history that could be used against them. Her caged emotions paced in her stomach. She called.

"Leave a message," his voice commanded. "We aren't home."

Who, she wondered, is "we?" Shaken, she left no message. Instead, she put on a pot of tea and remembered her case of chicken pox when she was sixteen. He took notes for her in all their shared classes and brought them to her house. Every day. Even when she was contagious.

Braced with twin jolts of caffeine and nostalgia, she dialed his number again, "It's just Miriam. I called around noon on Sunday."

The phone rang. It was Denise. "Can you come over? We need to talk about this party you're throwing for Stanza."

On the drive to Denise's house the windshield wipers beat a peevish, testy rhythm. When did this become "her" party for Stanza? She rang Denise's gong. The house wasn't cozy or comfortable, but it was sumptuously beautiful to behold, much like Denise herself.

Denise tossed pillows off the sofa so they could sit in the lavish living room. Matching vases teetered on matching tables, already crowded with matching picture frames that enveloped tiny photos. Denise complained about work in a code Miriam didn't understand. Denise was a consultant to companies in risk management, integrated forest products and embedded computer systems. Miriam had no idea what she actually did. Denise went part-time after the baby. The baby now wore her hair in dreadlocks and slouched against the vestibule wall, scowling into the cell phone. Denise home-schooled her daughter because the private school she'd been in was "too slow."

"Anyway," Denise said, "I can't be a part of this Stanza thing. I'm not sure how the party will go off."

"Go off?" As if it were a bomb.

"I mean, how would it look? Us throwing a party for Phil's ex?"

Miriam's chest constricted. "Look?"

"To our contacts. Thad's contacts."

The voice that came out of Miriam's mouth was not her own. "Contacts are what you put in your eyes. People are friends."

***

At home, the red light on Miriam's answering machine blinked. Two messages. One from him, telling her she looked gorgeous in that mink yesterday and asking if he could buy her dinner. She didn't have a mink. The other message was from Stanza. She returned the second call.

"So? What's up with Mr. Self-Made Misfortune?"

"I don't want him the way he is now. He used to be a prince, but I kissed him and turned him into a toad."

"Maybe he played some role in his own metamorphosis? Maybe you didn't lead him to sin?"

"When we were kids, all he had to offer was a shy, hopeful heart and I wanted a good provider. Now he's traded himself for all this property and I want a shy, hopeful heart. So this aching sadness isn't about him. It's about me. I want my life to live over."

"Oh, Miriam. Live it better now."

***

Miriam flipped on the computer and, while it beeped and shuddered and growled into WordPerfect, she considered who needed this party. Stanza or Miriam herself? To return to the Garden where love occurs for the sake of love. Just love. Just love for the one person who'd been decent to her lately: Stanza.

The humming computer inserted graphics of confetti and birthday hats for a border. Then Miriam typed the following:

Surprise Birthday Party for Stanza Eaton, soon to return to being Stanza Kowalski. Potluck. Bring what you can. And bring the kids - even if you don't have any.