Thirty - Jill Emerson [11]
“Well,” I said, and he turned to begin the job, and I started to close the door. Then something occurred to me. I had forgotten to settle a price.
“It’s ten dollars,” he said.
“It’s that much?”
“That’s the going rate, ma’am.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s all right, then.” It seemed exorbitant, and none the less so because it was the going rate, but one learns to rely on order in an ever-changing world. I seemed to remember boys shoveling paths and walks and much longer driveways than ours for just a dollar. But everything else had gone up, and my memories were of longer ago than I cared to realize. I wonder, now that I think about it, how much he could have demanded without my objecting? Twenty dollars? A hundred? The keys to the car? What?
I went inside, I closed the door. And, between cups of instant coffee and half-smoked cigarettes, I kept finding myself sneaking to the window to watch him. At first I honestly didn’t realize what I was doing. Then I did, but that didn’t make it easier to stop it. Au contraire, mon cher.
I spilled a cup of coffee on the table. I mopped it up with a dish towel, which was slightly brainless. I stopped myself on the way to the window.
I felt—I don’t know how to describe it. Drunk? Maybe. It was a little like being drunk, like occasional states of drunkenness in which you can almost feel another mind taking control of your head. I was still me, but somehow it was a different kind of me, and the everyday me was still in there, watching, taking it all in, but not able to do much about anything.
Is that schizophrenic? I don’t know, I’ve never been out with one.
(This coffee is terrible.)
I went to the bathroom and stood under the shower for a while, letting the hot spray hit me on the back of the neck. This is usually better than a tranquilizer, and it sort of worked; I could feel the tension literally draining from my flesh. I got out, I dried off. I shaved my legs and armpits (I love that word, it’s so wonderfully crude), and fantasied shaving my pubic area. I have never done this but have often wanted to. To recapture youth? I don’t think so. I think it conjures up visions of Oriental cathouses or something. If I did it, I wonder how long it would be before Howie noticed.
I didn’t shave it. But I did put a little cologne on it, and some more between the breasts and under the arms and behind the ears. And did all this still thinking in at least one part of my mind that I wasn’t actually going to do anything, that this was just playacting, a costume for a role I would not perform.
I put on a terrycloth robe. Nothing under it. Except, she said vampishly, me. Then I went to the bedroom and put on my diaphragm. I had stopped taking the pill when Howie and I decided that we had to have children to go with the house and the station wagon. I didn’t want to have children, but if I was going to have them it seemed only fair to let Howie father them.
I watched him finish shoveling the path. The walk and driveway were already done. I checked myself in the mirror, looking to see if there was a gleam in my eye, a telltale gleam in my eye. I checked both eyes and saw no gleam, but I did seem to look younger and fresher than I had lately. Imagination? Wish father to the thought?
He came to the door. So did I, from its other side, and opened it. If he noticed that I had changed from sweater and slacks to bathrobe he chose to ignore it.
“All done,” he said.
“You did a good job.”
“Be no trouble getting the car out now.”
“You must be tired.”
“Well, it’s pretty hard work, but I don’t mind.”
“Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee?”
“Well, uh, thanks, but I don’t really care for coffee.”
I think groaned inwardly is what I did then. It seemed vital to get him inside. What could I offer him? Milk and cookies? Did we even have any in the house?
“How about a beer?”
“Well—” A tough decision for him. He didn’t want to come in but he really wanted the beer. The beer won.
We sat at the kitchen