Ordinary Life: Stories Read online

  Praise for Ordinary Life

  “The beauty of Berg’s stories is that she leaves us wanting more, wondering where the characters go from here.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “The facing of life’s difficulties, and the hope that they can be relieved by those around us, is the nicest characteristic of Berg’s writing.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Quietly uplifting … Berg is a sensitive and controlled writer with an uncanny way of capturing how women think and what they say.”

  —USA Today

  “A strong collection, sharply observed … with several outstanding stories.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Berg pays careful attention to crucial emotional turning points in the lives of her characters, chronicling these moments with subtlety and grace.”

  —Baltimore Sun

  “[Berg] again demonstrates her forte in using the telling anecdote or the significant moment to quietly reveal character. Sure-handed and subtle, this volume is a reputation-builder.”

  —Boston Herald

  “Lyrical from start to finish … Shaped by Berg’s artistic talents, these stories of ordinary people in ordinary situations are anything but ordinary.… The tales are remarkable on a number of levels.… Berg’s collection is truly special. Her stories are artfully and skillfully done, but she leaves no brush strokes, hers is a beautiful, but unobtrusive, style.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Reading this collection is like being privy to one of these late-night conversations among women. You leave it feeling privileged, included, reassured by stories that are at once familiar and refreshingly different from your own.”

  —Book

  “At her best, Elizabeth Berg is an impassioned portrayer of the rich and complex tapestry woven by the commonplace interactions of unremarkable people living out everyday lives. Ordinary Life … is Elizabeth Berg at her best.… A reminder of the richness that abounds in each of our everyday lives.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “If there is a central core in our everyday life … it is relationships. Elizabeth Berg writes about them. Splendidly … Berg shows her mastery in the way she sneaks up on you, lulls you with a disarming subtlety … [a] unique collection of warmhearted stories.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2002 by Elizabeth Berg

  Reading group guide copyright © 2004 by Elizabeth Berg and The Random

  House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York in 2002.

  Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Random House Reader’s Circle and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Some of the stories in this work have been previously published in Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, New Woman, Special Report, and Woman.

  www.randomhousereaderscircle.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berg, Elizabeth.

  Ordinary life: stories / Elizabeth Berg.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-142-4

  1. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.

  2. Women—United States—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction, American.

  4. Love stories, American. I. Title.

  PS3552.E6996 074 2002

  813’.54—dc21 2001041754

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Ordinary Life: A Love Story

  Departure from Normal

  Things We Used to Believe

  Caretaking

  Sweet Refuge

  Take This Quiz

  Martin’s Letter to Nan

  What Stays

  White Dwarf

  The Matchmaker

  One Time at Christmas, in My Sister’s Bathroom

  Regrets Only

  The Thief

  Today’s Special

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Ordinary Life:

  A Love Story

  Mavis McPherson is locked in the bathroom and will not come out. The tub is lined with pillows and blankets. Under the sink, next to the extra toilet paper, there is an economy-sized box of Wheat Thins, a bowl of apples, and a six-pack of Heath bars. Against the wall, under the towel rack, is a case of Orangina, and next to that is a neat pile of magazines and three library books. A spiral-bound notebook and pen lie on top of the toilet tank. Hanging from the hook on the back of the door are several changes of underwear.

  Mavis is on retreat, she tells her husband through the crack in the door when he comes home that evening. Al volunteers at St. Mary’s Hospital, dividing his time between delivering newspapers to patients and helping maintenance fix faulty equipment, though this is a secret from the administration—volunteers aren’t supposed to do that. Al’s mechanical skills are legendary, but he is not known for his sense of humor. “Come on, Mavis,” he sighs. “What’s for dinner?”

  “You might as well go on over to Big Boy,” Mavis tells him. “I’m not cooking dinner. I’m not coming out for a week or so. It’s nothing personal.” She leans her ear against the crack in the door, listening for his response.

  She hears only the wheezy sounds of him breathing in and out. She’s afraid Al has emphysema, but he won’t go to a doctor. “See ’em enough at the hospital,” he always says. “Stuffy little bastards.” She tries to look through the crack in the door, sees a tiny slice of Al’s blue shirt, a piece of his ear. “Let me in, Mavis,” he finally says, rattling the doorknob. “I gotta use the can.”

  “You know perfectly well we have another bathroom. You’ll have to use that.”

  “I don’t like that one. And it doesn’t have a bathtub.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  “So how am I supposed to shower?” Al likes to shower in the evening, a characteristic Mavis has never liked, finding it somehow effeminate. Overall, though, she has few complaints. She loves Al dearly.

  “You’ll have to ask the neighbors,” Mavis says. “Or maybe the Y. I’ll bet the Y would let you shower there.”

  Silence. Then Al says, “What is this, Mavis, a fight? Is it a fight?”

  She steps back, fingers the ruffled collar of her white blouse. “Why, no,” she says, a little surprised. “I just got an idea that I really want some time completely to myself. And I’m taking it. I don’t see the point in running off somewhere. We can’t afford it anyway. Can we?”

  Nothing.

  “So,” she says, “I’ll stay right here. I don’t need anything but some quiet. I want to be in a small room, alone, to just … relax, and not do anything else. I was thinking of the ocean, but this is fine.”

  “Oh, boy. I’m calling the kids,” Al says. “And I’m calling Dr. Edelson or Edelman or whoever that robber is that you go to every twenty minutes. You’ve gone around the bend this time, Mavis. What have you got in there, Alzheimer’s? Is that it?” He knocks loudly at the door. “Mavis, ha
ve you lost your goddamn mind?”

  Mavis goes to the mirror to look at herself, tightens one of her pearl studs that has loosened, then walks back to the door. “I am seventy-nine years old, Al,” she says softly, into the crack.

  “What’s that?”

  “I say I’m seventy-nine years old,” she says, louder.

  He inhales sharply. “Aw, jeez. This is about my missing your birthday?”

  “It’s not my birthday for five months, Al. Remember? I was born in December. In a blizzard. Remember?”

  “Well, I’m calling the kids,” Al says. “Yes sir. All three of them. Right now.” She hears his voice moving down the hall. “And your doctor, too.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Mavis calls out. And then, yelling, “Al? I’m not going crazy. I’m just thinking. I was going to tell you about this, but you …”

  He can’t hear her. She sits down on the closed seat of the toilet, peels the wrapper off a candy bar. “I am seventy-nine years old,” she says aloud, and takes a bite. This is the beginning of what she wanted to say. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure what would come next, she figured it would just happen, naturally. She examines the candy bar as she chews. She has always liked this, looking at food while she eats it. Makes it taste better. She wonders how they get that curly little swirl on the top of every candy bar. It’s a nice touch, even though some machine did it and it is therefore not sincere. She crosses her legs, gently swings the top one, then leans over to the side to inspect it. She used to have great legs. “Oh, honey,” Al had said the first time he undid her garters and pulled her nylons off. “Look at these gams.” He had kissed her thighs, and she blushed so furiously she thought surely he’d see it in the dark. They were on their honeymoon, in a cottage in the Adirondacks. Her hair had been long and honey blonde, pulled back at the sides by two tortoiseshell combs, curled under at the bottom in a pageboy. The Andrews Sisters were on the radio at the moment she lost her virginity, her white negligee raised high over her breasts, one comb fallen off and digging into her shoulder, though not unpleasantly. She shook so hard when Al entered her he wanted to stop, but she wouldn’t let him. “It’s fine, honey,” she said. “It just hurts.” Her fingers were balled into fists against his back and she uncurled them, tried to relax. She looked for a place on the ceiling to focus on. She’d concentrate on that, take her mind off things.

  “I can wait,” Al had said. “Why don’t I wait?” He’d raised himself up, tried to look into her face. But she hid herself in his shoulder, embarrassed and silent, then giggling.

  “I don’t think that helps, waiting,” she’d finally said. “You just go on ahead. It’s all right.”

  Afterward, they’d made a nest of the blankets and pillows, faced each other in the dim light, spoke in low tones of all the things they wanted to do: candlelit dinners every Saturday night, four children, the biggest Christmas tree on the lot every year. They touched each other’s faces with the tips of their fingers, probed gently at the openings between each other’s lips. At breakfast the next morning, Al had said Mavis looked different. More womanly. She said she’d noticed exactly the same thing. He took her hand, she put down her fork, and they went back to the bedroom. Already they had a special language, Mavis had thought, and the intimacy grounded her, fueled her. It hadn’t hurt so much the second time.

  “Hey, Mavis,” Al says now, banging on the door. “Jonathan wants to talk to you. He’s on the phone. You’d better come out here.”

  Mavis walks to the door, straightens her skirt, speaks loudly into the crack. “Listen to me, Al. I just told you I want to have a week to myself. I’m not coming out to talk on the telephone to Jonathan or any of the other children. I wish you’d stop running off and just let me tell you about this. No need to take offense or to think I’m crazy. For heaven’s sake.”

  “Jonathan is on the phone, long distance,” Al says.

  Mavis rolls her eyes. “Well, I guess I know it’s long distance, Al. If he lives in California and we live in Minnesota, then obviously it’s long distance.”

  “So what am I supposed to say? That his mother can’t be bothered talking to him?”

  Mavis sighs, thinks for a moment. Jonathan in the Bathinette, his baby fists waving, his palm-sized chest rising up and down excitedly. “Water,” Mavis is saying. “Yes, it’s water, darling.” A kerchief is around her head. She is wearing red lipstick and open-toed shoes.

  Quietly, Mavis says, “Go and tell Jonathan that I’m fine, Al, that I’ll call him in a week. And don’t you say anything else. I can hear you, you know!”

  She can’t, of course, the phone is too far away, but Al doesn’t know that. His hearing is starting to go, hers has thus far remained the same, so as far as Al is concerned, Mavis’s hearing is suddenly extraordinarily acute.

  “And come back after that,” Mavis says. “I want to talk to you.”

  “The hell I will,” Al says. “I’m going out.”

  “Where to?”

  “The straitjacket store, that’s where.”

  Big Boy, Mavis thinks. Well, good. When he comes back he’ll be in a better mood. He’ll get beef because she’s not around to tell him not to, probably a cream pie for dessert, too. Fine. Then she’ll be able to talk to him. Maybe he’ll feel a little guilty about what he ate. That will work entirely to her benefit as well.

  She slips off her shoes, climbs into the bathtub, lies back against the pillows. It’s really not bad. For once in her life, she is happy she’s so short. She wiggles her toes inside her nylons. She should have dressed more casually. She undoes the button on her skirt, then unzips it slightly. There is a tan-colored stain on her blouse between the second and third button. Coffee? She wets her finger, rubs at it. Well, she’ll soak it later. It’s convenient being in here. She closes her eyes. She’s really very comfortable, could probably take a nap right now. But then it will be hard to sleep later on tonight.

  She arranges the pillows to act as a backrest and climbs out of the tub to get a magazine. She feels the mean pull of arthritis in her knees. She selects a Good Housekeeping, climbs back in the tub, starts flipping through the pages, and realizes she’s already looked at this one—there’s the place where she tore out the recipe for low-fat lemon chicken.

  Mavis used to give all her old magazines to her sister, Eileen, but her sister died last year. Breast cancer. She closes her eyes, lets herself hurt for a moment. The pain has not yet dulled, nor does she expect it to or even want it to.

  Mavis and Eileen slept in the same bed as children, until she was eight, Mavis’s preamble to sleep was to wrap Eileen’s long hair around her fingers, then suck her thumb dreamily while drifting off. She had to make sure Eileen was sleeping first; Eileen got mad if she caught Mavis messing with her hair. Mavis had once tried wrapping her fingers in the folds of a satin doll dress her mother had given her for her birthday, but it wouldn’t do—she needed the weighty, coarse silkiness of Eileen’s hair. She liked the heat from Eileen’s scalp at one end, reminding her of the thrilling fact of life, and the cool and bristly bluntness at the other end was wonderful to twitch your fingers over rapidly. It was worth getting caught every now and then for all that pleasure. The worst that ever happened was the night Mavis didn’t wait long enough, and Eileen reared up like a ghost in her white nightgown and socked Mavis three times in the stomach. Otherwise any attack was a sleepy and halfhearted thing that barely hurt, a dull nudge in the rib, a smack on her leg that was off the mark and carried no more weight than a falling towel. And of course, she usually didn’t get caught at all.

  Mavis had gotten married first, and when Eileen asked her for certain essential details, Mavis had said, “Now, you might want to cry out. But don’t.” Oh, she missed her. Missed her. The conversations at the kitchen table, their elbows on the embroidered tablecloth, the steam from their coffee cups rising up. They would talk far into the night when they got together every week for dinner, and Al and Big Jim would get so impatient. They were all righ
t as long as the fights were on, or some other sports event, but then the minute that was over, they wanted to go, one or the other of them, back home. When they were at Eileen’s house, Al would come to stand at Mavis’s shoulder, and she ignored him as long as she was able to. When they were at Mavis’s, Big Jim would eventually sit down heavily at the table with them, simultaneously irritated and interested in what could possibly keep them here for so long, what could be so important that they hadn’t even taken their aprons off from doing dishes before they sat down. They had just talked yesterday, hadn’t they? Hell, they talked every day, didn’t they?

  On one memorable occasion, Al and Big Jim had both gone to sleep in the living room, both of them on the sofa with their heads back and their mouths open, and the women finally had the chance to completely exhaust themselves. They woke their husbands up at 2 A.M. after they’d taken a picture.

  It was a week ago, when Mavis was cleaning out the bedroom closet, that she came across that photo again. It had fallen out of the album, its corner holders still in place but the glue on back dried to a fine dust. Mavis sat down on the bed with the photo, smiling at it. It had zigzag edges, looked to have been cut out with pinking shears. There was a bright spot off to one side of the photo, evidence of the imperfect flash of that time. The men’s heads were inclined fraternally toward each other, their mouths open in ways so identical it almost seemed the whole scene was staged. But if you looked a little closer you could tell it wasn’t, something about the defenseless posturing of the rest of their bodies, the heartbreaking vulnerability of real sleep: the open hand, the foot off at an odd angle, the sock drooping below the pants leg. The men’s faces were so young and unlined Mavis nearly gasped, looking at them. Their shirts were short-sleeved, boxy looking, tucked into the pleated pants the men wore with thin belts. Mavis remembered ironing the shirt Al was wearing, standing in the kitchen with the radio on, potatoes boiling gently on top of the stove. She’d sprinkle the ironing first, using a soda bottle with a special top, then store it in a plastic bag in the refrigerator until she was ready. She used to iron everything, even Al’s underwear. She can’t remember exactly when she stopped.