Helping Myra |
Issue 16
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My book group met this afternoon. The women in the group are my best friends. We were a group long before Oprah or Reese or even Jenna said reading was a good idea. Some Wednesdays, especially thick summer days like this one, we gather at Maggie’s cottage on Lake Lee. If the group’s not too large or the weather too bad, we’ll take Maggie and Simon’s pontoon boat out for the afternoon. Other days, we may lunch at a new restaurant, like the Bohemian-revival café on 13th or the faux adobe Mexican cantina near where the College Glen Mall used to be. The old mall space now houses a small business development center, or something, run by our local university, which has propped up the area. Most often, though, we’ll meet at Rachel’s where we’ll lounge on the deck that flows around a huge, spreading tree.
I don’t know trees. Rachel does. At a party once, Rachel overheard me telling someone about the tree. I called it a sugar maple. Rachel laughed loudly enough that I was embarrassed, and she never did tell me what it is. A live oak, maybe. The deck is in full shade by early afternoon. You can chat comfortably there for hours, and we usually do. I always read our assigned stories, in case we talk about them. We didn’t discuss a story today. We met at the landfill today. Instead of sipping one of Phyllis’s superb margaritas, as I’d have preferred, reclining in one of Rachel’s cushy floral-print chaises with the molded-in drink holders, I perched on the tailgate of a big, dirty Ford pickup. I’ve seen men in commercials sit like that. They always look at ease, which says something about truth-in-advertising or the indulgent relationship men have with the world because I definitely did not enjoy it. The truck was backed right up to the edge of the landfill’s pit, and the bed was piled way beyond the recommended payload limit. This was Myra’s fault. She presumed, as is her way, that the group would love to help her unload the truck. She didn’t clear this with anyone. Myra said, after parking the borrowed truck in Rachel’s driveway, “It’ll be an adventure.” It wasn’t. I’d already claimed my favorite chaise on Rachel’s deck. Rather than relaxing in the company of my friends, I got hotter and sweatier and even thirstier for my margarita, which if I had had right then I would have gulped down even before licking all the glorious coarse salt from the rim of the glass. Instead of the tequila, I gulped in the stench of the whole town’s rotting garbage being folded under by a bulldozer in the pit. I plan to recycle more. “Don’t talk about the story today, I didn’t read it,” Myra told us at Rachel’s. Myra never reads the stories. She said this with the toss of her head that swings her dark hair over her shoulder. The hair doesn’t stay back, of course. I want her to tie it back, put a barrette in it, cut it, something, just stop the head-bobbing. “Help me haul this debris to the dump.” Myra takes extension classes across town at State, and regularly uses words like debris. She says utilizes, too, instead of uses. What Myra wanted our help with represented the physical remains of her marriage to Rich. Their split was not friendly, and divorcing Rich, a pharmacist who owns several neighborhood drugstores, and who had the habit of grinding his mortar, shall I say, in any random, available pestle, had been Myra’s virtual job for over a year. She put in a lot of overtime on the project. Myra rarely started or joined a conversation without steering the talk to her agonizing marital experience. It’s a wonder she hadn’t created her own website, a broken-home page. Myra got so bad she couldn’t have gotten on a PTA committee. We almost excluded her from the book group because of her behavior, but Maggie prevailed on us to indulge Myra. “After all,” Maggie reasoned, “Rich is an s.o.b.” Because of the boat, we defer to Maggie a lot. *
Phyl and C.J. rode to the dump in the truck with Myra. Rachel and I, along with Denise and Denise’s terrier, Emily, followed in Rachel’s car, which was a good thing. Emily is cute enough, for a dog, but I wouldn’t have let her in my car, so if I’d had to drive, Denise probably wouldn’t have gone with us. Wherever Denise goes, Emily has to go, too. There was no good reason for Denise to miss the fun, not if the rest of us had to endure it. As it was, we lost Maggie, who said she had a meeting to attend and couldn’t stay too long anyway. Everyone but Myra knew better. Despite her encouragement to us, Maggie isn’t that tolerant with Myra.
The clerk at the landfill’s scale station, a big guy with wraparound sunglasses, weighed Myra’s truck. We could see his face, shiny in the heat, through the window as he listened to Myra. She pointed back to us, and the man looked in our direction and nodded. When Myra pulled off the scale, he waved us through. Emily, at least, was excited. She stood with her paws on the back of the seat, looking out the rear window, next to Denise. She panted noisily, and registered one-note barks as the occasional gravel ricocheted off the underside of the car. I wouldn’t have figured driving a stick-shift for one of Myra’s skills, but she handled the truck well. It didn’t lurch when she worked the clutch. She seemed familiar with the dirt track, and disappeared over a hill. When we topped the rise, I saw the pit ahead. There were a few other pickups and a city garbage truck emptying their loads. Myra wheeled around last along the row past the city truck, and backed up to the pit. Rachel parked grille-to-grille with Myra’s truck. The five of us and Emily stood around the pickup, waiting to hear Myra’s plan. We expected too much. Myra simply lowered the tailgate and said, “Let’s get it out of here.” It was like the burial at sea of one’s enemy, though lacking the essential respectful, if grudging, dignity, and certainly lacking water. Myra was saying good-bye to about a ton of small items and some good furniture. I couldn’t picture what would be left in her house. Some pieces required two or three of us to drag them out of the bed and shove them into the pit. With what Myra could manage by herself she said a few bitter, precise words about whatever atrocity of Rich’s the item brought to mind, then dropped it into the pit. “Rich utilized this Makita cordless drill,” she said one time, holding the tool like a large caliber pistol, “to put a very smooth half-inch hole in the center of my grandmother’s cherry dining table.” Stuff like that. I understood Myra’s anger, but the drill looked brand new. I almost asked if she would mind if we took home some of the things, like the circular saw that preceded the drill into the pit. My husband, Steve, mentioned something last week about needing a circular saw. We worked hard clearing out the truck. The dust clung to our slick arms and legs, not heavy enough to be a mud pack exactly, but pretty slimy. Emily was going to need a bath. Also, a blister was raised on my left heel by the strap of my sandal. You can’t work at the landfill in sandals. Another city garbage truck had rolled up to the pit next to us. All the men on the city trucks, I noticed, wore heavy, sturdy shoes. Professionals obviously. The bed to Myra’s truck was half-empty when we got to the sofa. Myra couldn’t jerk this heavy item out alone, so Rachel and C.J. climbed up to help. The high-backed sofa was very formal, upholstered in a fancy striped fabric, all plum and grape and creamy butter. An object for a big living room, it could seat four adults, and showed limited wear, a description that would not apply by the time it was removed from the truck. One of its legs had wedged into a hole in the bed’s floor. Myra, Rachel and C.J. pushed and pulled, but their efforts lacked leverage. They didn’t dislodge the leg, but did loosen one of the arms from the back of the couch. As they struggled I saw the men of the crew of the garbage truck next to us watching them, laughing among themselves. All except one, a pleasant looking guy with thick, graying hair and intelligent eyes. By that I mean compared to his co-workers’. “I hate this sofa,” Myra said, putting her hip smartly to the loose arm one last, dejected time. C.J., barely a size 5, a real lightweight with close-cropped auburn hair, flopped onto the couch. “Can we go back to throwing out small tools?” she asked. “We’ll get it, if you’ll get up, C.J.,” said Rachel. She was practical and didn’t hesitate to take charge. She touched Myra’s shoulder, a tender gesture for Rachel, whose usual style of support was a terse Get a life, but Myra waved her away. “No, that’s not it. We’ll get it, it’s just stuck. I just hate this sofa. I think Derrick was conceived right here, maybe Julie too.” Myra rubbed a hand across a spot along the top of the high back. “Derrick’s voice is changing. Sometimes I hear him talking in another room, and I don’t recognize him. So many men, and I had to pick Rich.” Rachel and C.J., Phyl and I exchanged looks as Myra smoothed her hands down her hips. “You know, he liked it from behind,” Myra continued. “This couch was just the right height to bend me over. Whenever the urge struck him, middle of the day, UPS guy at the door, whatever. Foreplay was me saying, ‘No, Rich, not here, not right now.’ Very romantic.” C.J. quickly jumped up. Rachel said, “That’s disgusting, Myra.” “You think so? At least he wasn’t breathing in my face.” The pause that followed was broken finally by Denise who had been up on her toes, leaning into the bed, busily moving things around. She pulled out a photo album and held it out to Myra. Denise’s white shorts were reddish-orange across the front where she’d been against the truck. “You can’t throw this away. It’s got pictures of the kids.” Myra didn’t reach for the album. “Rich, too. He could’ve taken them.” Denise kept her eyes on Myra, but handed the album over to Phyllis, who was standing by me. “Look,” Denise said. Phyllis opened the album. She tilted it so I could see it, too. Under the protective sheets were prints made on a home printer, some trimmed from plain copy paper, that could’ve belonged to any family. Myra, still heavy from the pregnancy, standing by the van, holding a baby—Julie, not Derrick, because the van arrived shortly before Julie did. The kids playing at the beach, covering Rich with sand. Julie in her tee-ball uniform. Derrick as one of the wise men in a church pageant, his crown too big, slid down to his eyebrows. The backs of a bunch of kids in pointed birthday hats huddled around the kitchen table. Another photo, a recent one, was loose between a couple of pages. It was of Rich and the children, with Mickey Mouse in the background, taken over this past spring break at Disney World. Rich had flown the kids down, Myra said, as a reminder that he could do it and she couldn’t. Evidently, he asked someone to shoot their picture with his phone. Rich is smiling, but it’s a hard, thin smile; it looked to me like he was having to work at enjoying the day, and his grip on the kids might have been a bit tight. Julie has dipped her shoulder a little, like she’s trying to slip out of Rich’s grasp, and Derrick is not looking at the lens. Clearly, they were not in the Magic Kingdom. “Rich is good looking,” said Phyllis without thinking, as she tends to do, more or less to me, but Myra heard her, too. “For a Neanderthal.” C.J., still up in the truck, said, “It’s okay to hate him, but Rich is still their father.” I figured C.J. knew what she was talking about. She divorced Bobby about three years ago. If you didn’t know C.J. had three children, you’d never know she’d been married. I’m happily married, I think, but maybe I shouldn’t be, married I mean, judging by C.J. Phyllis closed the album. “Even if you don’t want them, Derrick and Julie will someday,” she said to Myra. “Tell me about hating him again,” Myra said. “I like that part.” Phyllis waited until Myra wasn’t looking, then tossed the photo album into the cab of the truck. *
We hadn’t made headway on the sofa, or anything else. The heat had sapped the little organization we’d had. We stood around the truck not talking, pretty mad at Rich—and Myra—for ruining our afternoon.
The city truck parked next to us cranked up, and belched a heavy cloud of smoke. I don’t see how the workers could stand riding in it all day with that noise. As it pulled away, a man on the crew waved to the driver. He was the one who hadn’t laughed at us earlier. He walked toward us. Myra saw him, and whispered to Rachel, “He’s kind of cute.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “May I help you ladies?” the man asked as he neared. I noticed his syntax right away, may instead of can. Rachel preempted Myra. “You missed your ride.” He looked past us at the departing truck, and smiled agreeably. “It’s not that far back out.” I guessed him to be late-forties, maybe a little older. He was nice looking. You could take him home to meet your folks without getting the third degree. He looked good in the city’s sanitation department uniform, light green shirt, dark green pants. His well-worn work boots looked comfortable and reminded me of my blistered foot. “I’m Alex,” he said, thumbing the patch on his shirt. “Need some help?” We nodded and he hopped into the truck’s bed. C.J. said, “The couch is stuck.” He inspected it. “Why’re you throwing this out? Looks okay.” Myra said, pointing, “It has a broken arm.” Alex reached over and moved the arm several times. “This could probably be fixed.” “Probably.” “But you don’t want to.” “No.” “She’s just divorced. It belonged to her and Rich,” Phyllis blurted. Myra turned and shot her a vicious look. I cringed, moving out of the line of fire. Alex didn’t react. “It won’t take much to move this.” He positioned himself at the corner of the sofa. He used good lifting technique, his legs doing the work instead of his back. On his third try, the jammed leg popped free with the painful sound of groaning metal. Alex rotated the sofa enough to put the leg down on a solid spot. He stood up and wiped his hands. “There.” With little subtlety, Myra moved up to the side of the truck next to where Alex stood in the bed, closer than I thought necessary, to say thanks. She pulled coyly at the loose fuchsia pullover that matched the swooping stripe on her black cyclist’s shorts. Myra wears a lot of athleisure styles, brands like lululemon and Athleta. Vuori. She’s a regular poster child for high-end merchandisers. The shorts were a padded kind, a style she favors because she has no butt, a fashion decision I will never need to make. Three or four years ago, Rich wanted her to have augmentation, but the process scared her. What if it turns out lumpy? she wailed to us at the time. Compared to what you’ve got now, honey, we told her, anything would be lumpy. She decided not to risk it. She was performing her hair-swinging trick. “You’re welcome,” Alex said. He didn’t seem interested in the hair. Myra noticed this, too. She flipped it again and then brushed it back slowly with her hand twice. Her eagerness festered. She tried another approach. “Would you like some of these things before we throw them out?” I knew I should have asked about the circular saw. Myra’s offer to rummage through the pile did not extend to her general helper population. “I’ll take a look.” Alex worked around the bed of the truck, squatting. He picked out a couple of small items, an electric shaver and some kind of big wrench, and set them aside. He held up a small open jewelry box. He had large hands. “These earrings, too?” “Too what?” “Throwing them away?” “Everything.” “Nice pearls. Not costume.” Myra pretended to look carefully at them. “Oh, those?” she said with a quick laugh. “Those are from my era with Alan. He was such a good earring buyer. How do you know they’re real?” “Worked in a jewelry store once. Nice atmosphere, crummy hours. Thought your friend said your ex’s name was Rich?” “Alan was before.” “Another ex?” Myra flinched. “No.” That would depend on how you looked at things. Alan was before Myra married Rich. He was during, too. I’m the only one who knows this. I was at Myra’s one day a couple of years ago, before Myra pulled the plug on her marriage, helping with some project or another. We’d been drinking a nice, fruity white most of the afternoon, which had slowed our progress, though Myra didn’t care. Halfway through a second bottle she let it slip about hooking up with Alan again. She panicked and swore me to secrecy. Which I have maintained. I’ve never told anyone, especially not Maggie, who would not appreciate Myra’s Pitiful Pearl act while carrying on just like Rich. Never even mentioned it again to Myra. Though to be perfectly honest, I’m a little conflicted. Sometimes when she goes on about what an asshole Rich was, not keeping it in his pants and all, I want to remind her that Rich’s khakis weren’t the only ones not always pulled up. You know, live and learn? But I hold my tongue. Despite all her classes at State, Myra isn’t into self-reflection. Alex said, “If he bought such good jewelry, should’ve married him.” “Maybe.” Alex shrugged. “You don’t want them, I’ll take them, too. My wife will like them.” “Your wife?” Myra asked. Everybody registered the disappointment in her voice. “She’d wear something thrown out in a divorce?” Denise asked. “Not her divorce. Could’ve bought them at a yard sale or an antique shop. No different.” “Where will you tell her you got them?” C.J. asked. “Here. Thought that counts.” C. J. snorted. No one else could think of a reply. Myra didn’t move. In the pit below us, the bulldozer churned. “Anything else like these?” Alex finally asked. Absently, Myra shook her head. He pocketed the little box. “Let me pitch this in the pit, then, and we can all go home.” Alex cleared the bed quickly. If Myra had hired him to haul this load for her in the first place, the job would have been done much faster—and we wouldn’t have been involved in it. We’d never have left Rachel’s, and I’d have enjoyed my margarita. Alex moved with the economy of one used to a job. His shirt stuck to his back, and dark ovals of sweat stained his underarms, but he did look good. I caught Myra watching his arms. They were tanned and firm. I noticed them, too. A long scratch was healing on one forearm, a pink line where the scab had been. His hands were dirty, of course, but looked like he took good care of them. His nails were trimmed. We thanked Alex for his help. He asked if we’d give him a ride out to the scale house. Myra didn’t answer, just opened the door and got behind the wheel of the truck. Rachel looked at her for a moment, then said to Alex, “Hop in the back of the truck, if that’s okay. All our passenger room is taken.” The rest of us piled in the vehicles we came in. Emily, her tongue out, curled up on the seat beside Denise. The last we saw of Alex before he vanished was the little salute he gave us. Myra was not as smooth with the clutch as before, and he bounced through each shift of the gears. Rachel hung back, trying to keep from running us off the road in the dust that swirled up from Myra’s truck. |
Larry Pike's writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. His poetry collection Even in the Slums of Providence was published by Finishing Line Press. He lives with his wife, Carol, in Glasgow, Kentucky.
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