college, they had had the back screen door replaced, and the old lady leeched onto poor Steve Umbert and refused to back off. She made him hot chocolate after he expressly told her he didn’t want any, then fumed when he took one sip of it and left the remainder untouched. And worst of all, she’d dragged Anna downstairs, hiss-whispering, “Go on, flirt with him!” and Anna shook off the old woman’s grasping claw, with a horrified whisper, “How could you? The man is married. I know his wife. You are absolutely disgusting—just because you fooled around doesn’t mean—”
(If Steve hadn’t been there, Anna might not have screamed so much when the old lady hit her, but Anna had to let someone know what was going on—and when Steve came running, wanting to know what was happening, the old lady made it seem as if Anna was doing something to her, pulling away, whining, “Don’t hit an old lady...I’m just an old woman! But Steve’s eyes were knowing as he quickly wrote out a bill and said, “I’ll have my brother come over later to finish up,” only his brother Chad never did come, of course, and Ma ended up doing the job herself...and for some odd reason known only to themselves, neither Anna nor the old lady explained why Steve left in mid-job....)
Yet those incidents seemed so alien, so removed from reality. that Anna found their very veracity questionable, even though there were plenty of people in town who could have either refreshed or supplemented her memory of them, if only they’d realized that she was now doubting. And paddling happily in dangerous depths.
“Yahoos...I do believe that I like that word,” the old lady was saying. She added, with a phlegmy gurgle, “It’s...how do you say. Asp.”
“Apt,” Anna gently corrected, pulling the plate of pie back for one last polite bite.
“Yes, apt. Like my Gramma used to say, ‘If it walks upright and wears—’”
“Oh, guess what,” Anna quickly interjected, before the old lady did a complete rerun of their conversation, “I met Bib Stanley this morning, and he said there was a job opening at the station. Clerking, and being a matron.”
Panic shone in those colorless eyes. “You can’t be a matron, you’re not—”
“Anyway, I have to stop at the CEP office and ask about it,” Anna butted in, not wanting to hear another of her grandmother’s word games. “And I don’t know if Marv is going to be there later on this afternoon—I think he takes off earlier than the rest of the workers—so I’d really better get going. The pie was great. I’ll be back later on this week, okay? And. call if you need anything before then.”
“When you get home, be sure and give me the signal. I worry about you, walking and all.” Anna had wondered when the old lady would be getting around to that same schtick she pulled on Ma. The minute Ma got home from the old lady’s, she had to go through the same old triple-blind phone routine, just to check in.
“Control,” Ma would say. “She wants that same old control. Worried, my ass. If she can’t get it one way, she gets it another. Control,” as her face got red in angry, strawberry-shaped blotches.
Anna nodded, and said, “I’ll be sure to do that, although I’ve been walking like this for years, and early in the morning, too.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that,” the old lady demurred, but Anna caught her drift—you shouldn’t do that, period. As if she didn’t want her granddaughter out doing things she couldn’t control or supervise.
“It keeps food in the fridge.” Anna shrugged as she looped her purse strap over her right arm.
“Once you get that job, you won’t have to go out early, will you?” That same six-year-old’s wheedle that used to drive Ma crazy, and no doubt drove Aunt Joan and Aunt Bella insane—in the latter’s case, for real—when the old lady was a little girl. What was it that the old lady’s father was supposed to have said before they carted him off?
“Take care of my Lucy,” or “Watch over my Lucy.” Something no doubt suitably romanticized by the old lady over the years, to show how much her father adored and loved her, and to underscore how mean and nasty her late mother’s sisters were to poor little Lucy Miner. In reality, her father had probably been yelling, “I’m innocent,” or something better suited to the occasion at hand—said hand that happened to be carrying a dripping, reddened ax....
“If I get the job. I’m not counting on it. You find that out in this town. It’s all who you know or who you’re fucking.”
“Oh, Anna.”
“I’m almost thirty years old. I’ve earned the right to say fuck once in a while. Really, though, I have to go. See you later, okay?” Anna said as she let herself out the door and quickly shut it behind her, just as her mother used to do. The old lady claimed that getting up and down too much wasn’t good for her, yet, despite her claims of dizziness, she wouldn’t let either Anna or her mother have a key to the front door, which made Anna come to the conclusion that the old lady’s claims of dizziness were just that. Claims.
But she didn’t consider any other alternatives for the old lady’s persistent habit of making her wait for up to four or five minutes while she slowly made her way to the door—alternatives that had nothing—and at the same time, everything—to do with the state of being dizzy.
And as she walked up Evans Street, toward the CEP office at Fourth Avenue East, Anna didn’t think to turn around, to see if old lady was watching her through one of the white frame house’s many windows. Ma had said the old lady was in the habit of doing so, another example of control. But if Anna had looked backwards, just a peek, she might have stopped cold—although her grandmother was watching her, she wasn’t watching through any window she could have reached in the short time it took Anna to walk from the porch to the sidewalk.
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