is going to be busy today.
Things to do. Buy shoes for jogging. Vacuum house. Buy seeds and fertilizer, rosebushes, clematis vine. Fabric for curtains. Do one hour of exercise. Get newspaper, start looking for job.
Ann washes her hair. It is really getting long. After she moved out of Rupert’s house—during one of those days when she was driving around looking at real estate and sleeping in motels—she took her nail clippers and really hacked herself up. She looked like the lead singer in a punk band. It was so terrible she had to do something, and there was nothing left to cut, so she bought some Nice’n Easy and dyed it red. After she’d been out in the sun for a few months it turned orange.
But now her hair touches her shoulders, and it’s brown again. She blows it dry, turning under the ends, so it looks very fluffy. She puts on a little blusher and some eyeliner. “I am not going to throw up today,” she says.
Today that man is coming to Rototill the vegetable garden. Reg. She will ask him to make some flower beds too. Maybe he can do something about the leak under the kitchen sink.
She has seen him in his yard, sawing up wood, and she remembers seeing a deer in his yard last fall. He was skinning it. She had to turn away. From the clothes she has seen hanging on their line—T-shirts with pictures of celebrities printed on the front—there must be a teen-aged daughter too. Sometimes she sees the wife bringing in the wash. She is a thin woman who wears curlers a lot. One time when Ann was walking past, the woman called out to her that she was the local Avon representative and would Ann be interested in any of their products. Ann said she guessed not. The woman said, “Just thought I’d ask,” as if this was what she’d expected.
Ann doesn’t know anybody in this town. The checkout girl at the Grand Union, of course. “You sure must like honey yogurt,” she said a while back, when Ann came in for the second time during a really bad day of eating. After that she was careful to buy her yogurt at different places.
She wishes she had a friend here. Sometimes she stops in at Sal’s for a doughnut and coffee. She does not really like coffee but she likes listening to the conversations of the people at Sal’s, especially the high school kids. Ann has been out of high school only four years, but she can’t remember what it was like being carefree and so unscarred. Her one big worry was getting into a good college. Her friends from those days will be graduating in a month or so. She hears from a few of them sometimes, but not much. Rupert never liked it when they called, and the one time when her friend Patsy came to visit was a disaster. Patsy brought a Talking Heads album and played it over and over, very loud. She was eating macrobiotic, trying to decide if it would be compromising her beliefs to take money from her parents for a trip to Japan that summer to study ceramics. The three of them went out to dinner together that night and Ann wore an outfit she had not worn since she moved in with Rupert—a green velvet jumpsuit with flat, Mary Jane-style Capezios. Rupert said, “You’re trying to make me look like a dirty old man,” and made a point of talking about how he was losing the hearing in one ear. Patsy did not visit them again.
Ann isn’t sure who she could make friends with in this town. The high school kids would think she was very old—the boy who sometimes carries her groceries out at the Grand Union has called her Ma’am. She can’t picture herself having tea with her neighbor the Avon lady, either. Even the women her age all seem to be married, with a couple of babies.
She’ll get a job; that will help. She has not thought about a career in years because she assumed for so long that she would always live with Rupert and grow vegetables and make dollhouse furniture for Trina on vacations and have a baby of her own someday. Even after she left she was thinking: He will come rescue
Things to do. Buy shoes for jogging. Vacuum house. Buy seeds and fertilizer, rosebushes, clematis vine. Fabric for curtains. Do one hour of exercise. Get newspaper, start looking for job.
Ann washes her hair. It is really getting long. After she moved out of Rupert’s house—during one of those days when she was driving around looking at real estate and sleeping in motels—she took her nail clippers and really hacked herself up. She looked like the lead singer in a punk band. It was so terrible she had to do something, and there was nothing left to cut, so she bought some Nice’n Easy and dyed it red. After she’d been out in the sun for a few months it turned orange.
But now her hair touches her shoulders, and it’s brown again. She blows it dry, turning under the ends, so it looks very fluffy. She puts on a little blusher and some eyeliner. “I am not going to throw up today,” she says.
Today that man is coming to Rototill the vegetable garden. Reg. She will ask him to make some flower beds too. Maybe he can do something about the leak under the kitchen sink.
She has seen him in his yard, sawing up wood, and she remembers seeing a deer in his yard last fall. He was skinning it. She had to turn away. From the clothes she has seen hanging on their line—T-shirts with pictures of celebrities printed on the front—there must be a teen-aged daughter too. Sometimes she sees the wife bringing in the wash. She is a thin woman who wears curlers a lot. One time when Ann was walking past, the woman called out to her that she was the local Avon representative and would Ann be interested in any of their products. Ann said she guessed not. The woman said, “Just thought I’d ask,” as if this was what she’d expected.
Ann doesn’t know anybody in this town. The checkout girl at the Grand Union, of course. “You sure must like honey yogurt,” she said a while back, when Ann came in for the second time during a really bad day of eating. After that she was careful to buy her yogurt at different places.
She wishes she had a friend here. Sometimes she stops in at Sal’s for a doughnut and coffee. She does not really like coffee but she likes listening to the conversations of the people at Sal’s, especially the high school kids. Ann has been out of high school only four years, but she can’t remember what it was like being carefree and so unscarred. Her one big worry was getting into a good college. Her friends from those days will be graduating in a month or so. She hears from a few of them sometimes, but not much. Rupert never liked it when they called, and the one time when her friend Patsy came to visit was a disaster. Patsy brought a Talking Heads album and played it over and over, very loud. She was eating macrobiotic, trying to decide if it would be compromising her beliefs to take money from her parents for a trip to Japan that summer to study ceramics. The three of them went out to dinner together that night and Ann wore an outfit she had not worn since she moved in with Rupert—a green velvet jumpsuit with flat, Mary Jane-style Capezios. Rupert said, “You’re trying to make me look like a dirty old man,” and made a point of talking about how he was losing the hearing in one ear. Patsy did not visit them again.
Ann isn’t sure who she could make friends with in this town. The high school kids would think she was very old—the boy who sometimes carries her groceries out at the Grand Union has called her Ma’am. She can’t picture herself having tea with her neighbor the Avon lady, either. Even the women her age all seem to be married, with a couple of babies.
She’ll get a job; that will help. She has not thought about a career in years because she assumed for so long that she would always live with Rupert and grow vegetables and make dollhouse furniture for Trina on vacations and have a baby of her own someday. Even after she left she was thinking: He will come rescue
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