Chapter 3: Colloquy on a Narrow Staircase
Daimy switched off the flashlight. “You see how silly your old Mabel has become, Danny? I forgot to turn on the light! Now I sit in the dark. When I set out - to climb the stairs, that is - the light was perfectly lovely. Shouldn't I have known better: how long it was going to take? Of course I should! But I forgot to turn on the light. Look at your old Mabel now. Would you pull it, please?”A long frayed string descended from a bare bulb high in the ceiling. Daimy spotted the clutchpiece tied to its end, a little blue pagoda. Illuminating the staircase was not something he wanted to do, not that and show his face. And so he probed the area around Mabel with the flashlight, careful not to shine it in her eyes. The beam was wide and diffuse, and seemed to distract Mabel. “My,” she said, “I've only three steps left. Just about there, Danny!”
A piece of a throw rug hung slightly over the lip of the top step. On the landing above there was a chiffonier. Along the back wall was a tall double window, through which the unseen moon was beginning to shine. Daimy studied Mabel in quick looks, as if trying not to stare. One leg was underneath her, the other plopped down on the lower step. Her ankle was bent and turned down like a broken wheel. Daimy noticed the bunches and twists in her skirt and sweater, suggestive of some protracted effort. Some fruitless torque. On her face he saw the residue of a thousand grimaces. He turned the flashlight off.
“Can't find the light, Danny?” Daimy walked heavily up two steps, buying time. He waved an arm, feigning a search for the string. “I could not bear to see the house dark at Christmas, Danny. Now, why didn't I just leave all the decorations down here last year? That would have been smarter. But who knows what a year brings? Time is not tied to a post like a horse to a manger. All I wanted to do was light the house, put some color into it. Then lay down and rest.”
Catching the light in Mabel's hair was an iridescent barrette with a pair of celluloid butterflies mounted on stems of thin gold wire. The antennas were fashioned with tiny pearls and pink crystals. It was a very old piece and suffered its age. The wings were fretfully gossamer and drooped. To Daimy, the whole effect made Mabel look like she were being attended to by the smallest, the scrawniest, the most feeble of angels, whose power was already run down.
“And you think I would've considered water, eh, Danny? No, not your old Mabel. Have you ever seen such a silly girl? Will you bring me a cup? I'm so thirsty.”
Daimy sat on the stair. He pondered. Then he walked lightly down the stairs and out the door, stepping away as if from a sleeping child's room. He walked, almost tiptoed, to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door; he left the door open and let its light spread into the room, then sat at the old Formica table, which wobbled under his elbows. He took pieces of peanut brittle from a plate there. He went back to the fridge and took out a brick of cheese. On the wall was a faded cross-stitch: “Whatsoever your hands find to do, do it with all of your might.” He shrugged, and then - admonished by the needlework - began a methodical search of the drawers in the kitchen secretary built into the wall. A covetous search. He came away, though, with nothing.
Hungry, with a desire for more than cheese, Daimy rummaged through the pantry. He found there a mountain of canned goods. He went cupboard to cupboard, shifting cans in the hope that something appealing - or at least familiar - would appear. Where did she get all these peculiar brands? He reached into the deepest recesses of the cupboards, momentarily entertained by the old-fashioned illustrations on the cans: Baker's Best Reliable Flour. Sunbonnet Sugar. White Rose Coffee. Ballonoff Flour - Your Mother's choice since 1837. He looked a long time at a Ceresota Flour tin, which showed a small boy slicing an enormous loaf of bread which he held on his lap. The boy was pulling a rather sharp knife through the bread toward himself. Hadn't he ever learned what a no-no that was, Daimy thought. In the illustration, the blade was about half an inch from slicing into his opposite wrist! “Misuse of a good tool,” he said to himself. “And a bad example for all.”
One of the cans, which had been set on its side, began to roll down the counter. It revolved slowly and Daimy read White Rose three times before watching it, gleefully, go over the edge. It landed with a dull thud, not the usual ting of a hollow tin can. Then Daimy returned to the table, put his head in his hands, and said, “I can't do this.”
Daimy went to the sink, ran the cold water and then looked into the freezer. He felt against his shirt pocket, dumbly, as if in it he'd find some wadded up answer: “What would let me leave an old woman alone in the dark?” No doubt she preferred ice, because alone in the whole compartment were a dozen trays of ice cubes. He filled a tall glass and then took a hand towel, folded it, and tied it round his face, like the bandanna of a desperado. The towel was green. In his haste, Daimy had taken the repeating pattern to be men in camouflage jump suits. They were actually ginger bread men. Now only his eyes showed.
Daimy entered the staircase and - before pulling the light string - said, “Ma'am, my name is not Danny. But I've brought you some water. And I swear that I will not hurt you in any way.” Then he pulled the clutch-piece.
He brought the water to Mabel whose eyes shrank from the sudden brightness. He quickly returned to the bottom landing. “I don't understand,” she said. Daimy lowered his eyes. Then he assessed the stairs, which were filled on either side - all the way up the flight - with old cartons and twined packages. Lost for words, he fingered a box filled with letters, old and brittle. Every address was the same. “You're Mrs. Hazelton?”
“I've forgotten you, haven't I?” and her head drooped. He rushed his reply, reassuringly, “No. You don't know me.”
“But you know me,” she said, raising her eyes, quizzically, jovially. Of his available features, she looked at the bridge of his nose. “And you've come, uh, dressed for the season!” Not recognizing her own towel, she smiled.
“I just read the envelopes here. ... they're all addressed to the same person. I just figured.”
“Letters?”
“From Cleveland. ... Detroit,” and he flipped through them, relieved she was so easily distracted. “Muncie. From 1938, '39, '40. A whole box of them.”
“Detroit? From who Detroit?”
“Nellie-something. The name is faint. Two Nellies - different last names.
“Oh, bless you. You've found her letters! Same Nellie, she married.”
“They're just laying here.”
“But I still don't understand. How. ... why come to my home?”
He raced again, “Not to hurt you, I swear.”
“Oh,” then Mabel thrust herself upright, “Oh!” Then she put a hand to her chest, “You haven't come for a visit at all, have you?”
“I'm leaving right now. I'll be gone.”
“Eighty-seven years I've lived - more than 60 in this house, and this is the first.”
Daimy adjusted the bandanna. Mabel said, “You're a jumper, aren't you?”
“A jumper?”
“Thieves who come in through windows.”
“I didn't come through the window.”
“What do you think your parents are thinking right now?”
“They're probably thinking about how to get to the track tomorrow. Not me. Listen, I'm going to go, so. ...”
“Please,” she said, “No. Christmas is coming.” Daimy stood, ready to exit. Mabel continued, “All I wanted was to see the house lit.” She patted her knees, “These are done, and these,” she said, nodding to her feet, “won't work anymore. I've gone as far as I ever will. Three steps more and...”
“Someone would have come.”
“You have a rosy view. No, to come anymore to me: there is no one.”
“I can carry you downstairs. There's a cot, and the kitchen is close.”
“No! Up I want to go. Christmas is three days far. And in three days, on an even floor, I can at least light one candle in the window.”
“Where do you keep your candles?” And Daimy walked up the stairs, giving Mabel a wide berth, as if not wanting to communicate to her a headbug. He turned on the upstairs lights and found a place where he could lay her down. When he returned he found her reading a piece of yellowed sheet music. She held onto it as he positioned himself behind her. “I'm going to lift you now,” he said. He gripped her underneath the arms. She said, “I won't be able to use my feet.” And so Daimy came round front and scooped her up, testing each step as he blindly rose, stunned at how immeasurably light she felt as he cradled her. With his head so close to hers, he smelled the powder she wore: old lady's powder. And it was solitary and forlorn. As she gripped him round the neck, she said, “You're not a stone age child after all.”
“Maybe I am,” said Daimy.
“They used to say if stone age children had obeyed their parents, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.” Daimy set her down on a gold davenport. “I want to sit, not lay,” she said. Daimy asked where all the decorations were and Mabel directed him to the attic. “There's no light up here,” shouted Daimy. “It's black as pitch.”
“You've a flashlight, don't you?”
He brought down several boxes and pulled out lengths of garland which Mabel began to untangle. He unpacked strings of lights, wreathes, stockings, sleighs, figurines, ornaments, miniatures and other indefinable things that looked as if they'd come from the Smithsonian. “We must dress the front rooms,” said Mabel. And Daimy strung the garland, hung the lights, placed the figures, tacked the wreathes, according to his own sense, astonished that this woman did not once direct him to alter a single thing. Within an hour the pair was in the center of a swirl of silver and red and gold and green, as thorough a Yuleyard as ever was.
Daimy asked, “Do you have any of that, you know. ... shaking-can-snow-stuff? We could spray stencils on the windows.”
“I'm afraid I don't,” she said. He sat down with his disappointment. “I wish I did, though,” said Mabel.
“Yeah, it would look good,” he said.
“It looks now. ...and Mabel wiped her eyes, “so very, very splendid.” Her breath was uneven in its joy. “Your hands lit this house. You kept your promise. And I will remember you.”
“You mustn't do that,” he whispered very lowly. Then he said to her, “I'll take you downstairs now.”
“No, I want to be here. I'll stay. Look at that!” And she nodded delightfully toward the twinkling.
Suddenly conscious, and ashamed, of his bandanna Daimy felt again the bristly urgency to flee. He stumbled over a garland and hastily fixed it again before running down the stairs. And halfway down he heard, “I thank you.”
In the kitchen Daimy gathered up his bejeweled pillow and said rather hoarsely, “They owe me: anyone living this side of the river. This was all abandoned anyway.” On the counter lay an ice cube tray half empty and now melted. Daimy refilled it and placed it into the freezer. He tried, unsuccessfully, to push back the long splinters on the jamb. Then, just as he was about to close the door, he noticed on the floor a tin whose lid had popped open. And out of the can, flowing like a cornucopia, was a spread of very high denomination bills. “Holy Tuesday!” he shouted. He scrambled to gather up the bills, his hands shaking with a violence that delayed him time and again. When he was done he fled.
He crossed the river and made his way, very nervously, to his garage apartment. Thieves could be about. There he hid the money in a place he'd reserved for just such a find. Daimy knew just where to unload his goods, too - the jewelry, watches and table silver; he wouldn't get the best in return for them, but he'd get it quick. And who cared anyway? He already had a mountain of cash.
Everything that is cold and brutal and desperate about cities was concentrated here, in the place Daimy was now entering, a tilting black-bricked low-rise. He took the back stairs. And though it was long after midnight, the hallway of his destination was choked with the activity of buckle-faced men, broad-shouldered and sharp, with hands gilded in charcoal. A Christmas wreath - a photo from an advertisement torn out of a magazine - was tacked to a door. An unsteady woman ran by, wiping her eyes with a red scarf.
He entered a room. Inside was a man in a three-piece suit, a sharp contrast to the hall without, where even the smoke was depraved. But no one smoked around “King” Malvello. Daimy set his pillowcase on a table. “This is a real take, King. I know you'll be fair.”
The man looked at Daimy. One of his associates, a man with a twice-twisted mouth, said, “No better fence than King.” Daimy nodded anxiously, forcing a smile.
The man in the suit took from his vest a thin gold pen, adjusted the vest, and then he opened up the pillowcase. And his eyes grew three sizes, maybe four.
Next chapter: “Three Wise Guys & the Little Zippo Girl” Go Back up to the Chapter List
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tiredhorse wrote on Jan 10, 2009 11:26 AM:
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