7 minute read
Fiction
Back Side Back Side of the of the Storm Storm
Pammy and Ken have lived next to Mary Lou Barton for a quarter century, since right after their daughter was born. Back then, Pammy was a nervous new mother who was often left alone by a husband who had to work construction until he could start his own architectural firm. Even so, she was always feeding the baby or putting her down for a nap whenever her neighbor wanted to stop in. She had learned the fine art of vague unavailability from her mother. That first winter, an early snow knocked out the power and heat. Mary Lou had a generator, but Pammy felt like a stranger without privileges. Then her neighbor showed up with a quilt to bundle the baby for the walk next door.
Since then the two women have had an open-door policy, but it has always been wider open on Mary Lou’s side than on Pammy’s. Lately, Mary Lou’s multiple daily visits have gotten to be a downright nuisance. Rearranging the fridge. Taking naps in Corinna’s room. Vetoing dinner menus. Even when Pammy got the nerve to ask her not to take the Sunday paper before they’d read it, she was ignored. Now Pammy is so afraid that Mary Lou will somehow ruin tonight’s dinner with Ken’s clients that she hasn’t mentioned it at all.
The Carlingtons, whom Pammy privately calls “the-devil’s-playground-meets-the-root-of-evil,” are talking to Ken about turning their barn into a yoga studio. So she’s chosen each detail of tonight’s party for its layers of meanings and entry points of conversation. Ali Farka Touré’s disc with Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal can take world-music hipness in several directions. Mali? We’ve been! Buena Vista Social Club? We caught the tour! Country blues? Ken, play one on your guitar!
Skip and Darla Carlington sit in the living room, sipping a smart yet subdued pinot from Sonoma and nibbling sushi. Pammy’s also put out a humble red pepper hummus with baby carrots. Balance. On the mantel tea lights shine in a row of vintage individual crystal ashtrays.
Neighbor Mary Lou makes one of her stealth entrances and swipes up some hummus with a baby carrot. She wears an old gray tee shirt and dirt from the garden on the knees of her pants. Her eyes have deepened with age to a sapphire blue, and her hair has been pure white for so long that no one remembers it as anything else. She halts Pammy’s startled advance with the soldier-withering stare of a commanding general. “What is this crap?” she asks.
Pammy peeks at Darla, who has a small smile planted firmly in place.
“This noise.” Mary Lou carves a large arc in the air and swings a drip of hummus onto the coffee table. “And that.” She aims the carrot at the model of the yoga barn.
What can Pammy do? She introduces their neighbor as she wipes up the hummus with her napkin. Mary Lou perches on the couch next to Skip.
“That’s our barn,” he says. “Darla’s going to run a yoga studio.” His wife clasps her hands on her knees, and although the night is cool, she’s wearing a sleeveless mock turtle that shows off her thin, shapely, yoga arms.
Mary Lou emits something very close to a snort. “This I’ve got to see.”
“Freshen your drink, Skip?” Pammy scoops up her guest’s glass that’s still half full. “She’s just stopped by to pick up something. Come on, M.L. In the kitchen.” She hovers; she will spill the red wine, even ruin her own couch, if she has to.
Mary Lou rises. “Good thing you don’t have a flat roof like the one that blew off the school. That was his addition, you know.”
Silence. Darla rotates her wrist and steals a glance at her watch.
Ken says, “Interesting topic, that.” He leans over the model and begins to talk.
In the kitchen, Pammy overfills the wine glass with the last of the first bottle as Mary Lou lifts the lid of a pot on the stove.
“You shouldn’t cut your potatoes that way,” she says.
Pammy opens another bottle of red.
“Mind if I have some?” Mary Lou asks.
Pammy swings around to her neighbor. Her large eyes brim and the cup of her throat deepens with the tension in her jaw.
“Get out.”
She says it low, like you would to a dog. She has never, in all these years, spoken to the older woman that way.
Mary Lou replaces the pot lid and turns. Without a glance or a word, she leaves the kitchen.
Pammy palms the coolness of her granite counter. She feels on the verge of a sob. Mustn’t stay too long in the kitchen or Darla may come to help. She grabs the neck of the bottle and the stem of the glass and returns to the remnants of her party.
Over sticky buns and coffee the next morning, Pammy tells Ken what happened in the kitchen with Mary Lou.
He breaks off a piece of warm pastry and pops it in his mouth. “She won’t come around for a while.”
“Good. I could use a rest.”
Ken finishes his bun and pours more coffee. He’ll soon go to the office, as he does every day. “What else do you have to do?” he asks.
He isn’t mean. He just points things out. First he’d moved the practice out of the house into an office downtown; then Corinna left her room for the big city. Pammy’s world has indeed dwindled. And although last night was far from the triumph she’d planned, neither had it been
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ruined by the unwelcome visit. In the end the Carlingtons agreed to sign a contract.
The first test of Mary Lou’s reaction comes with the thwack of the Sunday paper on the front porch. Pammy listens for the quick-quick steps of her neighbor. They don’t arrive.
After a few moments, she steps out onto the porch. A confetti of leaves flitters from the burnished bushes that mark their property line. The spider trails that hang from the porch roof wash back and forth in the breeze. Dew still clings to the shadowed patches of grass. For the first time in months, Pammy retrieves her own paper.
A rain storm builds quickly and passes with a few unusual cracks of morning thunder. It isn’t until the back side of the storm that lightning strikes a transformer. It’s not until sunlight spills through the kitchen window by her desk that Pammy’s video chat with her daughter abruptly freezes with the loss of power. Her energy hog of a laptop switches to battery power, but Pammy shuts it and picks up her cell phone. She calls back to say goodbye, properly, not at the mercy of a passing storm. That takes a while, and still the power isn’t restored.
Mary Lou’s generator kicks in and settles down to a steady buzz. Kind of like Mary Lou herself. Pammy’s world can’t wait for her friend to kick back in. She puts the remaining sticky buns (Mary Lou’s recipe) onto the pink flowered serving plate (also hers) and covers it with a dish towel from Mary Lou’s kitchen.
Outside Pammy stops to search the sky for a rainbow, although she knows the sun is too high. Instead, she admires the poststorm clouds, Q-tips in a blue jar. Without a rainbow, they’re the closest thing to hope. She ducks through the hole in the bushes, disturbing water droplets onto herself. That’s okay. She knows where the towels are in Mary Lou’s house. n
Brenda Sparks Prescott writes and also runs a creative management business in Cambridge, MA. You can follow her musings at brendaprescott.wordpress.com.
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