ProetryPlace Blog 75                             Minor Differences

Part 1 of 2

    “Ohhh. Are you leaving me now?” Her husky whisper was still heavy with sleep. His hands felt cold on her warm bare shoulders. They carried the subtle scent of musk, earthy and animal.

    “It’s almost eight. I don’t want to be late.” He had already showered, shaved and dressed for work and caught five minutes of the Weather Channel and a glimpse of Matt Lauer in some secret spot on the globe before returning to the bedroom to waken her.

    Her hand caught his, pulling him to her. “I’m all dressed and ready to go,” he said, and bent to plant a platonic peck on her cheek. He felt her indolent warmth rise to meet him. She turned toward him to receive his lips on hers and reached up to pull his shampooed head down to her searching mouth.

    “Baby, I’ve got to go . . . !”

    Later, he had considered calling in sick and spending the entire morning in bed. But, he was not practiced at deceit, and he deferred to duties beyond his connubial obligations. Quickly redressing in the semi-darkness of the shaded room, he prepared to leave without further contact or goodbyes. She did not lift her face from the pillowed comfort of puffy down to acknowledge or resist his departure except to utter a satisfied, throaty, “Bye now, Mik.”

    “Bye Nettie.” He grabbed the car keys from the dresser and willed himself to leave the room.

    He had missed the heaviest of the morning traffic. He parked in a far corner of the office lot, glanced at his watch and quickly walked toward the double glass entry doors of Universal Engineering, reluctantly shifting his thoughts from his wife to the tasks and problems that would confront him during the next eight to ten hours.

    Inside, the receptionist absently handed him two pink message slips. Her bottle-black hair hung loosely, covering half of her face as she spoke quietly and confidentially into the telephone. She did not look up or bother to address him by name. He hadn’t learned her name either. He called her Gina—of the species Lollobrigida. She welcomed visiting strangers warmly but except for the top brass and a few young studs like Brad, she could not waste any of her limited attention span on most of the common staff. Mik’s own preference was for brains over boobs, but he doubted that any man could help but appreciate her up-front assets.

    He glanced at the pink sheets. Good, the one o’clock meeting is cancelled. No reason given. And Brad is back and wants to talk. He will be waiting in my office.

    He’d hired Brad Stoner three years ago to help catch up with some of the minor engineering drawings that kept piling up. Stoner lacked full academic credentials, but he was a quick study. Where he lacked pure intellect, his determination, study and hard work more than compensated. Mik had given Brad personal attention and mentoring to develop his raw potential and had alerted top management to Brad’s achievements. And he had come to rely on Brad, gradually delegating more complex and difficult problems to him.

    “Hey old man,” Brad greeted him, “you’re smiling, and you’re late. Catch an early nooner?”

    Sometimes Brad is a little too perceptive, he thought. He dropped his attaché case on his desk and reached out to shake Brad’s hand and throw an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s get some coffee, my friend.”

    Mik had eventually come to regard Brad like the younger brother he never had, and Brad reciprocated with warm respect. Yet something remote and undefined limited their friendly intimacy. Maybe it was the working relationship. Maybe it was the age difference or generation gap. Whatever, it was always there, like a haunting fragrance, perceptible but unidentified.

    The office crew had finished with coffee and break-room gossip an hour ago. The dark dregs from the Pyrex pot were strong and bitter. “No time to make fresh, this will have to do,” Mik said. “Do you want some of the swill? You seem busting with news. How was your trip?”

    “It’ll wait till we get back to your office,” Brad said. Then, unable to resist his constant exuberance, he whispered, “I’m getting married again, Mik.”

    Stoner had been married two years ago for exactly eight months. Julie, his bride, a beautiful, slim blond, was a perfect complement to her tall, broad-shouldered, raven-haired husband. They cohabited for a year, but Brad had been reluctant to set the wedding date. Finally they eloped for a solitary but elaborately staged wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii.

    Mik and Nettie were invited to the newlyweds’ apartment only once, a few months after the wedding. They sat together on a stiffly upholstered settee to view photos of the happy couple in tux and short white wedding dress holding hands and embracing under a canopy of orchids, or tanned and athletic in shorts and tees with a grotto waterfall splashing behind them, or in a mock pose with Brad rescuing Julie from the rim of a steaming volcano.

    They had leafed through the expensive, professional album and given up the appropriate responses, a duet of “ohs” and “ahs” and “beautifuls,” but each had felt ill-at-ease with the newly-weds, sensing something oddly amiss in the elaborate picture show and something lacking or fictitious in their current behavior.

    On their drive home, Nettie was the first to remark, “God, I felt like I was at a bad Neil Simon play. Like they were pretending . . . posing all the time. They acted so un-newly-married, didn’t you think? Maybe it was just the feeling I got from those cold furnishings—they looked like samples from that ultra-modern furniture showroom at the mall.”

    “That furniture expresses them perfectly. Smart, stylish and expensive. But yeah, they were so, uh, so perfunctory . . . not at all intimate.” Mik dropped his hand on Nettie’s thigh. “Not even a pat on the ass. If you treated me like that, I’d think you were hinting at divorce.”

    Mik and Nettie’s furnishings comprised an informal and varied collection of mostly early-American pieces, overstuffed contemporary and inherited or purchased antiques of any era or origination. The eclectic collection had grown sporadically over the years, and somehow, it all fit together, a comfortable mélange they both approved.

    When Mik proposed marriage, Nettie had said, “We’re just too different.”

    Mik replied, “It’ll keep’s life interesting, you’ll see.”

    Over the years, he had repeated this assertion, always in response to her “We are so different,” or “We don’t agree on anything.” There was some truth in both of their statements. Differences abounded in their tastes in food, music and literature that years of marriage did not alter. Nettie was strictly meat and potatoes. Mik went for extensive smorgasbords or exotic international cuisine. He detested the hip-hop and rap that turned her on, as much as she disliked the classics or the Coltrane that he loved. They disagreed on points of religion, although neither of them practiced one formally or attended any church. They rarely disagreed on politics, but neither was a strong member of any party. Minor differences.

    Once, in their fifth year of marriage, while their furnishings were more meager but less worn than now, she had said to him one evening, out of the blue, “Maybe we should get a separation.”

    The notion was so remote to Mik, it was as if she had spoken a foreign language. The words just did not register. “What?” was all he could manage to respond.

    “Nothing. Go back to your reading.” And she let the statement recede from their consciousness, like a stone skipping away over quiet water.

    In fact, their bond was strong and genuine. Their basic perceptions and values were rarely dissimilar. Motherhood and Apple Pie. Honesty and Integrity, Home and Family and God bless the USA. Both were predisposed to kindness and consideration, not only for each other but for those less fortunate. Both were imbued with a need to care and to share, yet either could tear out your throat or your heart with spiteful slams if aroused in the heat of argument.

    Nettie’s killer instinct was more highly developed—she had majored in psychology with a minor in American Lit. She was more likely to hurl the hurtful phrase, then rush back like Florence Nightingale to repair the wounds with skilled understanding and gentle compassion. Careful and deliberate, Mik eschewed pernicious utterances until he flew over the edge, out of control. Only then did he select the most viscous and cutting articulations of attack. With that release, he withdrew for hours or days of brooding, resentment, and remorse.

    Each knew the others soft spots well. They both had learned to avoid them unless willing to suffer the anguish of the retribution that was almost sure to follow. Each anticipated the other’s thoughts or reactions, whether agreeable or not. Though as comfortable together now as their dissimilar and well-used furniture, each still thought the other to be the most interesting person on the planet. And they were good in bed together.

    Neither of them had been surprised when Brad announced that Julie had moved in with another man and was suing for divorce based on irreconcilable differences. Nor did it seem odd that Brad seemed hardly perplexed. He continued his private life as he had before and during the marriage—heavily involved in spectator and participation sports, body training four times a week at Singleton’s Spa and pick-up basketball games at the Y. It seemed quite in character—as if Brad had selected a mate much as he might have impulsively purchased a stylish new suit or a sporty new car, then quickly tired of it to the point of neglect and eventual abandonment. But they continued to wonder about the true nature of those irreconcilable differences.

    Walking back to Mik’s office, Brad attracted the usual flirtations from the female staff, single and married, young and old. They appreciated his considerate and deferential good manners but especially his smashing good looks. Need a favor from one of them? Have Brad Stoner ask her for it. He plied them with a wink and a smile, a quick personal inquiry or a bad, bad joke. Stoner was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he did have a unique shine

    Mik shut the office door. His surprise at Brad’s whispered announcement in the break room had abated somewhat, like the cooling of the hot, bitter coffee. Still, he was eager to know more. “Okay, let’s hear about it,” he said.

    “Well, the wedding date is two weeks from today—a civil ceremony. We want you and Nettie to be our witnesses. No one else is coming.”

    “Wow, that was fast!” He refrained from asking, “Is she pregnant?” or “Are you sure this time?” He said, “I’m not sure what’s on our calendar two weeks from now, but it’s probably not anything we can’t change. Nettie will be very happy for you. So am I.”

    Mik sat on the edge of his desk, eying the telephone. He itched to call home, to tell Nettie. He thought how he might phrase the surprise announcement and hoped she would not still be in the shower. He realized he still lacked some essential information to pass on.

    “So, Brad, who is this lucky girl that will claim you as her prize? You haven’t mentioned seeing anyone regularly . . . much less a new love life . . . or that you’ve been thinking of a new wife.”

    Brad blinked studiously and cleared his throat. Mik had never known his friend to lack confidence in any situation. Now he watched Brad Stoner shift his gaze nervously from the office window to meet his own eyes and back again.

    “We’ve kept it very quiet,” Brad said, “and it won’t be a new wife for me, it will be a new husband.”

    Mik’s mouth twisted as if he’d just ingested something of doubtful origin. He thought, what the hell are you talking about, man?

    He said, “A new husband? I don’t get it, Brad.”

    Brad smiled but offered little in the way of explanation. “You may have seen him sometime. He’s the wrestler—The Unholy Terror. Also known as Norman Kramer.”

    “But, he’s a man!” Mik blinked stupidly.

    “You got it, my friend.”

Richard Allen Anderson     2015     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com

The Painted Table - a memoir

ProetryPlace Blog 74

(A friend wrote recently of the trauma associated with leaving her home of many years, a lovely home where she and her husband reared her children and established deep community roots and fast friendships. Her article reminded me of the following piece that I wrote more than ten years ago as we prepared to move from our home of 22+ years in Roswell, Georgia to our current abode in Carrollton. The painted table is in reality a metaphor for all that one must leave behind during transitions such as this.)

THE PAINTED TABLE

    I hand over the bills to the driver; it’s a good deal.  Seventy-five bucks to haul off the assorted refuse and discards—a three-wheeled lawnmower, the 70’s Evinrude 2-horse, three black and white TVs, one white side-walled tire, old furniture—all the stuff we will not have room for in our new, down-sized home.

    I watch the loaded truck move down the driveway.  A face peers out from beneath the holey tarp.  The face is green with yellow eyes.  Then it is gone.

~

    In 1957, the third year of our marriage, I moved with my reluctant bride from metropolitan Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the rolling country roads of Centre County, Pennsylvania.  I had accepted a graduate fellowship at the Pennsylvania State University, and I was eager to begin my advanced education and this new adventure with my young wife at my side.  Dolly shared less of my enthusiasm as she moved away from her childhood home and family for the first time.  The adventure she faced was less defined and less appealing than mine.

    We arrived a week before the truck that would bring our small load of household belongings, and we rented a small apartment near the town of Lemont on the outskirts of State College and University Park.  Our back yard looked out over farm fences and fields and onto Mount Nittany, home of the mountain cougar mascot of Penn State sports, the Nittany Lion.  In another direction we could observe small children playing at recess on the grassy slopes that surrounded William McKinley Grade School where Dolly would later teach.  

    We met our new neighbors who lived in the three other apartments of the plain cinderblock building, and we drove out on small explorations of our surroundings to discover we were in the heart of Amish country, home to the “Pennsylvania Dutch.”  We slept on the floor on blankets borrowed from our new landlord; Dolly prepared meals in two small pots purchased at the five and dime store, and we waited and watched for our belongings to appear.  

    “Come home, the truck is here!”  Relief displaced frustration in Dolly’s voice on the telephone.  I quickly drove the short five miles from my university laboratory and helped unload a double bed, a dresser, a sleeper-couch, two armchairs, assorted lamps, and boxes of dishes and items we hoped had remained whole. Before the tall doors of the moving- van slammed shut, five more items emerged from its dark recesses—a dingy kitchen table with scratched and chipped paint of uncertain color and four matching chairs.

    Knowing we lacked kitchen furniture, Dolly’s parents had rescued the old set from a corner of their basement and shipped it along with our belongings as a gift.  The wooden

bow-back chairs appeared sturdy—and ugly.  The grayish table matched the ugly chairs but wobbled precariously on the floor.  What a great opportunity to test my skills as Mr. Home Handyman!

    A day later the table stood proud and strong, reinforced with spare bed slats, carpenter’s glue, and an assortment of screws and bolts, but still ugly.  Paint can perform miracles, and it did so now.  The chairs were reborn with green seats and gold rungs, and brush stroke by brush stroke, the drab and dingy table was transformed into a gleaming-green new centerpiece for our kitchen.  But still something was lacking—something to signify a new beginning for the table and for us.

    We both said at once, “how about an Amish family?”

    We had seen the quaint and picturesque, one-horse carriages moving at a steady trot as we whizzed by on country roads in our Ford convertible.  Mama in her full-length skirt, long-sleeved blouse and white bonnet sat next to Papa, all bearded, black and buttoned-up, with junior versions of them just visible through the small back carriage window.  They must have been used to gawkers like us and always stared straight down the road as if to assure we would not intrude on their secluded way of life.

    I started the tabletop portraits with a few hesitant waves of my yellow-tipped brush on the bright green tabletop.  First the Amish man with a stern beard, flat-topped hat and straight eyes appeared; then, looking across the table at him, his stout, young wife with

wide, bright eyes and pulled-back hair.  The face of the boy came next—serious like his father, but smaller and with uncombed bangs hanging over his forehead.  The last face was that of a small girl, resembling the mother with hair pulled back and hanging in pigtails.  A family of four in less than an hour.  Was this an unconscious prophecy?

    We were typical graduate students—broke but confident.  We had few entertainment options aside from the companionship of fellow student friends—all low-budget stuff.  We visited the Saturday morning pig fairs to buy the rich Amish bakery.  We attended student picnics.  We spent occasional summer Sundays at Black Moshannan Lake where the tannin-dyed water shimmered like a giant onyx.  We sat across from one another at the painted table, like the Amish woman and her husband, for many simple meals before either of the vacant sides was filled.  

     Dolly took a variety of part time jobs for needed income and diversions from days and nights alone while I completed Masters studies and continued my research for a PhD.  She had taught first grade in Milwaukee.  Now she was able to substitute teach at McKinley School.  She filed books on the stacks at the Penn State library.  She clerked at the Green Stamp Store in State College.  She did not become pregnant.

    We moved from our apartment home into a small house closer to the university.  For Dolly’s security and companionship we acquired a Border-collie pup from a nearby farmer.  We named her Wiscy, for Wisconsin, and laughed when she would shepherd us around the yard and house, her nose close to the ground, her gentle nips at our heels urging us where she wanted us to go.  

    A year before we left Penn State we applied to adopt a child, and after agonizing months of waiting and wondering the day finally came when we drove through the mountains to the remote orphanage to claim and bring home our first adopted child, a beautiful infant girl with solemn, dark brown eyes.  We named her Martha for her maternal grandmother and nicknamed her Marty for my best army buddy.  Wiscy practiced her shepherding and guardianship with her new charge while Marty played safely outside.

    The painted table continued to serve in our kitchen after we returned to Wisconsin to work and live, but within a few years we had outgrown it and the first house we owned there.  After adopting two more children, Jennifer and Danny, both blond and blue-eyed beauties, Dolly became pregnant.  After Kristine was born, dark hair and eyes like her sister, Marty, we moved into a larger home with plenty of bedroom space.  We bought a large, modern, hardwood kitchen set.  The old green and yellow set took second place status, but we kept it in the breezeway playroom for games and overflow duty with large crowds of company.

    The kids sometimes speculated on who the painted people were:  “Is that me?  Is that Mom?  Do you have a hat like that man?”, and they learned a little of our family history in the process.

    By the time we moved to Georgia, Marty was married with a baby of her own, and Jenny was attending the University of Wisconsin.  Dan and Kris left their childhood friends and schools and moved with Dolly and me to complete their secondary educations

in new schools, with new friends.  The old table and chairs, which by now had been chewed by a succession of puppies’ teeth and stained and marred by sundry substances in the performance of duty, moved with us too.  That was twenty years ago.

    Dan and Kris both found spouses in our adopted state, and each of them has two children.  I retired ten years ago after more than 31 years with the same company.  Our house, with its woods and creek and backyard pool is a lovely place to live, but it’s a little too much for us, now that Dolly and I live alone again.

    For almost fifty years the small Amish family has looked up from the table at a series of new, live faces.   It has stood on our back porch in Georgia, and seven grandchildren have continued to play there and eat there for family feasts when the dining room and kitchen were filled with their parents and grandparents.  

    But there is no room for it in the new house, even though only two chairs remain, repaired and repainted, but still scarred from years of use.  Where will they eat and play in our new house, we wonder, what of the memories the table can bring?

    “Wait!” I call to the driver, “Wait . . . wait . . . “

Richard Allen Anderson     http://richardandersonblogs.blotspot.com     7 June 2015