Sputterpub's Blog

Dana was cleaning up after her little dinner party. The cousins had already left, but Laura remained to help. Her husband was away on business and she had agreed to spend the night. It had been years since the sisters had an overnight together.

“Bring me a container for the leftover roast,” Dana said.

“What size?”

“What do you mean: what size? Just bring me a container! They’re all in the cupboard there.”

Laura suppressed a sigh of exasperation as she bent to the below-counter cupboard. Inside was a chaotic jumble of Tupperware, Glad products, and assorted containers in which guests had brought meal contributions over the years.

She tried again. “Dana. They make these things in different sizes for a reason.” She didn’t try to explain about surface area and oxidation and other scientific ideas her husband knew. Instead she considered how satisfying it was to find the exact right-sized container for its contents.

“I don’t think it matters that much,” Dana replied. She was looking at the leftover roast. Laura silently agreed that any small container would do, this time, but she wasn’t done with the subject.

“Remember when I smoked Winstons? There were twenty cigs in a pack. Of course. And usually when I bought them I’d get a fresh book of matches. Twenty little cardboard igniters in that too, and sometimes the matchbook cover showed the Winston logo. Well, when that happened, and someone asked me for a light, it threw me into a little tizzy. I so wanted to use the matches with the smokes (matching, as it were!), that usually I’d have a cig I didn’t want just to keep the count even.” She set a plastic container on the counter and placed the meat in it.

“Oh that’s beyond OCD,” Dana said. She loved Laura but she didn’t want to think back to that time. The sisters were estranged when Laura gave up smoking. They suffered a five year span of not speaking to each another.

“C’mon, D, you must share some of this quality. Doesn’t it give you a feeling of satisfaction when you’re at a cash register and the total allows you to use up the pennies in your purse?”

Dana turned from the sink then and looked open-mouthed at Laura. “I never noticed.” She ran water into the roast pan. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about pennies.”

Dana and Laura shared parents, blonde hair, blue eyes, and short stature. That’s about all they had in common. Dana was the pretty older sister and Laura was the smart one. Dana’s body was full-breasted and plump; Laura’s was athletic and firm. Laura had been the creative daughter; she still painted and wove. Dana’s family reputation was for intuitive understanding. As adults, Laura had been married for 35 years and had three sons. Dana was single.

None of those explained why only one of the sisters understood containers and organization. As they exchanged Tupper-words, Laura started developing a theory. Even though Dana was the natural counselor and consensus builder (her major had been sociology and her work experience was an assortment of nonprofit agencies and advocacies), it was Laura who developed theories about aptitudes and brains and relationships.

“I wonder if it has to do with the creative process,” she said as much to herself as to her sister. But Dana heard something. “Huh?” she asked from the sink.

“I know that picking appropriate containers sounds like the opposite of art. But when I’m creative, I’m not actually making anything. All of the components exist already. It’s really about choosing what goes next to what. Juxtaposition, you know? Making choices with integrity. Without affectation…”

Dana turned around then. The expression on her face was not warm. “Maybe. I’m not sure what you mean. Can we just finish up in here?”

“Oh shit,” Laura thought. Was Dana feeling inferior again? What was threatening about Laura’s idea? “So how are you doing?” she shot. “Are you missing Bill a lot?” Laura was not poking into a fresh wound. She knew her sister was heartsore, and she was trying to change the subject.

“I’m sad. That’s how I’m doing.” Dana toweled her hands. “Want a glass of something?” She hadn’t had a drink in over six months, but she still had a liquor cabinet. And there was half a bottle left from dinner. “What’ll it be? Water, wine, or something really hard?”

“Another wine.” Laura poured it herself. Dana opened a bottle of sparkling water. “I have octane.”

That took Laura a moment. “Oh.”

After a break of almost 30 years, Dana had rediscovered cocaine. Her old friend Mary had a regular supply and Dana had sampled it a month earlier. She liked it as much as when she was young and smoking Tareytons. She mooched lines from Mary a few times, then bought a gram for her own use.

She brought her little bottle to an upholstered chair and settled in. Laura took the adjacent chair and placed her stemless wine glass on the funky side table. That table was from their parents’ home, worn but indestructible. It was the one piece of Dana’s furniture that couldn’t be seen in a glossy catalog.

“How do you work this thing?” Laura was looking at the purple-trimmed clear coke container while she spoke. “I remember razor blades and $20 dollar bills and mirrors.”

“Silly – like this.” Dana took the bottle in hand and unfolded the little spoon from the screw top. She opened the vial, scooped out a bit of powder, and made it disappear up her left nostril. Then she refilled the spoon and held it under her sister’s nose. “C’mon. Plug up the other and snort.”

Laura took another hit on her own. She felt the nasal burn, the post-nasal drip, a frisson of something, and then she remembered that she always thought either the drug was overpriced or her system was obtuse, but she just didn’t feel much.

Dana snorted again and set the bottle on the table. “I really miss Bill. Of course.” They’d been seeing each other for over five years, once or twice a week, always at her place. That’s one of the disadvantages to adultery; they couldn’t go out together and they rarely saw one another on non-workdays. But they’d talked on the phone every morning. They’d exchanged email regularly. Dana knew the minutia of Bill’s life, and he understood hers. “Every time the phone rings at eleven, my heart bumps up a bit. That’s when he tended to call. Sometimes I really want him back.”

“Sounds like you could summon him,” Laura commented. She didn’t approve of the affair and didn’t want to see it start up again, the way it had the last two times Dana “discontinued” it, but they both knew the re-up ball was in Dana’s court.

“Yeah, probably. But the fact remains: it’s not enough for me. Ever since Dad died, I have too much time alone. Or maybe it’s my therapy: I’m better now, and aware that I deserve more than I’ve been getting. Probably both.”

“Funny thing about death. It seems to cause change.” Laura was referring to their uncle Leon’s demise, six years earlier. It was unexpected: an unlucky fall off his own roof that snapped his neck. Leon was their father’s baby brother – a fit 72 year-old at the time – and the accident devastated their dad. That was the event that brought the sisters together after five years of estrangement.

At that moment, Dana’s computer beeped about incoming mail. She didn’t hear it, because the machine was in her study and the sisters were in her living room. She didn’t notice Bill’s email till the next morning.

Ed had died. That was the subject of Bill’s correspondence. He explained that he wrote instead of calling because after their last breakup talk, Dana asked him not to call.

The email was not long but it was newsy. Ed died. The man was 74 but the circumstances were not normal. Accidental death. Ed who disliked travel had flown all the way to Indonesia on a second honeymoon with his second wife. Ed who liked activity went snorkeling in Bali while Maria sunbathed. And didn’t come out of the water. His body was found in a big tangle of kelp.

Bill wrote that he knew Dana would want to know.

She was stunned. Part of her mind grabbed at the idea that this news provided a reason to talk to Bill. Maybe to see him. Another part reeled in satisfied shame. She hated Ed. Loathed and detested him. She thought death became him. She knew she shouldn’t think that way.

Never had Dana felt lukewarm about Ed. She was charmed when she first met him. He was then almost 40, attractive, funny, friendly, working as a lawyer for the city. She was 31 and an incurable flirt. She supervised a clerical employment agency then and always stopped at the bar in her building lobby, between her stint in the office and her one-bedroom apartment. Ed and his friends were regulars there. Dana lived alone and enjoyed the company of others, so her one (sometimes three) martinis were as much about mingling as they were a mood-modifier.

Ed was a serial philanderer. He’d begun just after his honeymoon, having learned the tricks of the trade at his first job, mentored by older bad husbands, and his circle of men friends co-conspired and covered each other’s alibis. Dana was a promiscuous single blonde, buxom and boisterous. Their dalliance was inevitable.

They had fun in Dana’s apartment for several months. It was never serious, according to each of them and, while there was regular sex, it was more of a friendship than a romance. Dana felt no rejection when Ed moved on to the newest secretary in his office. She herself sampled a few of Ed’s friends before zeroing in on Bill, who became the love of her life: three on/off years at first and then resumption five years ago.

So there was nothing awkward or unnatural about introducing Laura to Ed back then. Laura was dissatisfied at home: bored with her husband and near-crazy with her son. The first year of motherhood had been blissful (kind of), but Vladimir was approaching the terrible two’s and Laura was feeling trapped.

Dana invited her sister to join her in the Tavern. And there introduced her to Ed. And even encouraged Laura to flirt, to enjoy the encounter.

Well. Laura did. And the chemistry between her and Ed proved irresistible to each of them. Laura had expected a drink and a little break from home. Dana had planned to give her sister a goose of grownup pleasure, but she half-expected Ed to follow her home for one of their (now rare) friendly tumbles.

Instead, Laura and Ed kissed, at the table. And kept at it like teenagers. Dana actually had to poke Laura’s shoulder to get her out of there.

The next morning she called her sister and told her, in no uncertain terms, that Ed was off-limits. She declared that it was uncool to hook up with a sister’s or best friend’s ex, ever, no matter how ex. According to Dana, that would be top-level slut behavior.

Laura disagreed. She’d already gone too far. She wouldn’t stop.

She didn’t stop. Laura and Ed saw one another for two years. Dana and Laura had a strained relationship then, but kept talking. They didn’t stop speaking for another two dozen years, when Laura mentioned something Ed had said about Dana back then, and one sentence led to another until there was a sororal outburst, at a restaurant table, followed by an inability to get their resentment/understanding cycles in sync so they could reconcile. Their uncle’s death five years after the breach brought them together again.

Dana knew she had to tell Laura about Ed’s death. As usual Laura had gotten up before her, but she went for a run after she made coffee. So Dana saw the email before she saw her sister.

In fact, she was thinking about an answer to Bill right then, a few sentences from her, followed by his replies, succeeded by a phone call, naturally leading to a private wake, producing…when she heard Laura return.

She shook the fantasies out of her head and rose from her chair. Laura was turning away from the refrigerator with a bottle of water in her hand when Dana entered the kitchen.

“Hey, Sis, I was just thinking about our container conversation last night,” Laura began. Her faced glowed from her run, and her speech was fast. “I think maybe you lack the cause-and-effect gene! I’m not saying that’s bad. Just weird. You have a different perspective than mine, and…”

“Laura.” Dana stopped her. “I have news.” Dana discarded her own little cause/effect fantasy about Bill and announced “Ed is dead.”

Laura got it. She didn’t ask “Ed who?” She said “Dead? How?”

“Accidental, according to Bill. He drowned in Bali.”

“Ed? In Bali?” For all of his gregariousness, both knew Ed had never been an easy traveler. But he’d finally left his wife of 40 years and married a younger woman he met on Match. Maria was from Italy; some travel was required. Apparently he’d taken to it. Enough to get to die in Bali anyway.

“He drowned snorkeling near kelp. That’s all I know”

The sisters settled at the kitchen table, with mugs of hot coffee. They still didn’t agree about Ed. Dana considered him the most despicable person she’d ever known. As far as she was concerned, he was a hound, sexist, vile, mean, and dishonest. Laura still had room in her heart for him. She didn’t admire him, but she knew he wasn’t evil. And she was pretty sure he hadn’t been lying when he told those old stories about Dana. The picture she had of that way-back time didn’t have Ed leaning forward and regaling his buddies with dirt about her sister; that would be girl-style gossip. Instead it contained snickers, non-denials, shades of boy-grossness more careless than malicious.

But Laura has learned not to contest Dana’s impressions about Ed. She’s had put those memories in a Ed-sized mental box, selected like a coffin to fit.

Bill feels normal. Bill feels sad. Bill doesn’t usually pay much attention to what he feels, but he’s full of himself tonight.

Like a high school senior, he is cruising his girlfriend’s neighborhood. Except Linda’s not his girlfriend any more. She lives in a hill-top condominium development that’s a decade ahead of a retirement community or assisted living; there are no kids, and the average age seems to be 60.

Their relationship ran into an ultimatum. Like a water balloon hitting a wall, it splattered for a moment and then dissipated, leaving only moisture as its mark. Salt water. Both of them had leaky eyes that night, and sometimes since.

He makes a right turn at the top of the hill, and then coasts slowly down the side street. He looks up at her balcony of course, but Linda is never out there. The 72 square feet of concrete (with an impressive bay view) belongs to her aging cat; it’s Maisie’s reward for making the transition from outside feline to house cat, from freedom (and bullets) to the litter box that Linda doesn’t tend often enough, which has littered the balcony concrete beyond what power-washing can remove.

Linda isn’t a housekeeper, Bill knows. She never has been. He knows that too. Partly he knows it because they’ve been close. They’ve talked. Mostly he knows it because he has been in, out, and then in again with her, so they’ve been acquainted for almost 40 years.

Bill and Linda are old.

He is 75. She is 66. He has been married to Corliss for 48 years. When Bill and Linda first met, they were 37 and 28. He’s thinking about that now.

They all worked in downtown Oakland. Near what would become City Center. The guys were approaching 40, married, with offices in Oakland and homes over the hill, where each moved as the kids arrived. They were work colleagues and/or friends. The women (called “girls” during the day and “talent” at night) were ten years younger, all single. Many were employees of the men.

Drinking happened. Drugs happened. Affairs happened. Sometimes messy in-office relationships but mostly encounters that developed in the bar they all frequented after work.

The guys were more collegial than the girls. Sometimes the females appeared in the Tavern as friends, but mostly they were solo acts. Whereas the men knew one another. Worked together, worked out together, played golf or pickup basketball together, and saw one another at weekend functions, with their wives. It was like all the guys were in a cheat-conspiracy and covered for each other. Collegial almost to the extent of feeling like a frat.

Linda wasn’t Bill’s first affair, but she was the important one. The other time it had been his young secretary Vickie, and that never went far. It was interrupted when Vickie got engaged, and completely severed when she got married.

His feelings for Linda went deeper. At least that’s how he remembers it now. He can’t recall that he ever thought of leaving Corliss for her, but he wonders for a moment, as he completes the block loop and makes the right around her corner again, what his life might have been like if he and Linda had stuck together back then.

Bill is honest enough that he can’t stay there long. Alone in his dark car, he blushes to recall the way he and the other men used to disparage the girls. They were hounds. Pigs. But the fact is he remembers when Linda became a bit of a joke among them (she had done most of the circuit before she took up with Bill), and then the joking started to tarnish her in his eyes, and he let things just peter out.

He’s a bit ashamed at how susceptible he was to the opinions of the other guys, but then he flashes back further, and he understands that he was even more sensitive when he was young. He almost winces remembering junior high jibes. Bill got his height early and only in old age was he thickening. Lanky was an understatement about him. Knifelike might be more appropriate.

The bike riding date, when he was in 10th grade and Jill was in 9th, and he showed up in shorts of course, and how she wouldn’t stop looking at his white stick legs.

Or the Junior Prom, dancing with Janice and her head just below his chin, which felt perfect, except when they wrapped their arms around one another it was clear he was narrower than she. And Jan wasn’t fat.

No, Bill wasn’t a social success then. He thought he was on-track when he made the baseball team. Not that it had the glamour of football or basketball. But he was an impressive pitcher. Until stricken with shoulder arthritis. Unheard of in someone so young. But nothing that would kill him. Just kill his pitching future. And eliminate any chance of golfing well.

It wasn’t till college that he felt accepted. He smiled as some of those scenes played like flip animation in his head. Lucking into Jim as a roommate. Angling away from history and toward law. Meeting Corliss.

He didn’t fall in love with her. But they got along. They meshed well with each other’s friends. And the sex was the best he’d had. They dated, and screwed, and naturally got engaged when they graduated. Most of their friends did. There was a year and a half of weddings almost every month.

Then people found jobs or went to grad school. Corliss worked while Bill got his law degree, and stayed in her field, PR, on and off while raising the kids. Bill started earning a respectable sum by the time their older daughter went to kindergarten.

Whatever passion he felt for his wife had dissipated by the time their third child, finally a son, arrived. But there was no reason to leave her. Both of them adored their kids and she kept up her end of the deal. He spent long hours in the office, at a job it turned out he loved, and he had social opportunities, mostly with men friends but sometimes with young women, that supplied the stimulation he never found at home.

It was a little different when he hooked up with Linda, again, five years ago. Neither was as good to look at as they had been when young, but each was more appreciative. Both had mellowed. The sex was not explosive, but it was sweet and warm. They spent much more time talking than they had in the past. Bill would make the (increasingly obnoxious) drive from his Lafayette office to Linda’s Oakland condo, cuddle on the couch with lover in one arm and cocktail in his other hand, and find himself telling her stories about his clients, his health, his anxieties, that he never mentioned to Corliss. Linda was a diligent girlfriend – not quite slipper-fetching or curling at his knees in fascination, but always well-garbed, made up, gracious and attentive. She talked too, and he paid close attention and made comments, gave advice even, that she received with gratitude.

They connected on the phone most workdays (including Saturday of course – Bill had never broken the get-away-from-home habit of Saturday in the office that he established in his prime, when there was actual work to be done). He made the drive from work to Linda’s condo and back home to Contra Costa County at least one evening a week. It had gotten to the point where Linda was almost as habitual as Corliss (but in a good way).

So when she gently lowered the boom on him, Bill felt it. Linda had never acted scheming or manipulative. She’d always said that she wanted more of Bill, but she’d made do with what she got. Until her father died. Then she was open and clear about the subject. Bill understood. Linda’s dad had taken up a lot of her time those last years. She visited him almost daily, fetched things for him from stores, took him to doctors, played hours of dominos. His death wasn’t unexpected, but it left holes in her days. It made her realize she needed more than Bill was giving.

He missed her. At first he checked in with her at least once a week. He didn’t know what he was after; he told himself it was because he cared, but he must have been hoping she’d summon him back. Then she sent the email. She wrote that as much as she longed for him, she didn’t want to hear from him till he had something to say. He knew what that meant…

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Sure he’d thought about it. Had a few very nice fantasies before likelihood intruded. Corliss would be beyond angry. She’d take everything she could. Including most of their friends. Maybe their kids. Their only grandchild. And it wasn’t like Bill was some young thing, worthy of happiness or more than he had. Shit, he’d done better than either of his brothers. He out-earned his father. Life could be worse. He wasn’t sure he deserved what he had.

At that moment, Bill came to himself. Not that he’d left, but suddenly his car started braking and he saw what was ahead of his windshield. Whoa. Wow.

His foot added pressure to the car’s automatic braking. He slowed to a stop behind a sea of taillights. He hadn’t even realized till that moment that he was halfway home. Trance-like he must have been driving.

It was more than a normal traffic-pulse, he noted as he fed gas to his engine and moved ahead, slowly, with the stuttering traffic. He heard sirens and looked in his rearview mirror at the first-responder light bars heading his way. He saw his own ridged brow and faded thinning hair under the flashing lights in his mirror. Felt an unwelcome frisson of adrenaline.

He crawled by the accident. Three cars spun the wrong way near the shoulder, passengers out, one flat on the asphalt not moving.

He paid attention to his driving then. Made it in fifteen minutes. Stretched in his seat while looking at his home of 40 years. Bill picked up his briefcase and jacket and headed for his front door.