Offering (eBook)

Alice, June 1973

The irritation and knot of regret behind her left breast are finally easing. Alice takes a sip of coffee and recounts the episode with Lucy this morning. There was no argument. Just her own angry words and then Lucy’s frown, silence, and bewildered expression before she walked out of the room.

Lucy could be so irksome. Again, again, Alice found her sitting at the dining room table and reading the newspaper. First thing in the morning! This seemed to be the routine every summer morning, year after year. It wasn’t only bread and jam these days, but instant coffee. It was getting expensive. Lucy drank more than her share, besides, at least two big cups of it every morning. All the while, Alice had been trying to keep the instant for the afternoon. Alice likes a half-a-cup, along with a bit of sweet, if there’s anything on hand. But yesterday, she noticed the jar of coffee was nearly empty!

Didn’t Lucy understand at all? Maybe she didn’t. Silly. She should have by now. But maybe she had been a little hard on her. Still, she had felt so angry. It’s another summer, and Lucy, Mark, and Eleanor were already lazing around as if they hadn’t a thing to do. Lucy, with the newspaper and her coffee, and then all the baking she insists on doing. There’s Mark and the television or that electric guitar and Eleanor and her books. She’ll lie on her bed and read for hours on end and ignore her when she asks for help.

This morning, she was trying to get the vacuuming done before getting her own breakfast. She had wanted to get all those crumbs off that dining room floor. But there Lucy was, sitting on her backside, a backside, by the way, which seemed to be growing larger. There she was, right in Alice’s way.

Her children just did what they pleased! After Alice had finished the vacuuming, she’d noticed that Lucy was gone from the house. She hadn’t even said where she was going. Alice had found her plate on the table. There was a huge drip of jam, probably close to a tablespoonful, left on the plate. Well, she had taken that bit of jam herself and used it on her cereal instead of bothering with sugar. Those kids! When she, Dora, Edith, and Henry were growing up, they were lucky to get jam for their bread. But her children just took things for granted. Would it ever change?

Alice takes a bite of the Special K cereal, which is a little stale – not surprising as it was reduced, half-off the original price. She makes an effort to conserve things, to save money, unlike her children or even Earnest. But it does her no good to waste time thinking about all this. She has things to do. She must think of today before the day is gone… . . She wants to get those beans weeded, fertilize the tomato plants, and get a few groceries. She could use some help with the shopping, but she supposes she’ll have to beg for it.

No, no one appreciates her or the work she does around here. They don’t understand, either. They tell her to stop nagging. But how can she stop nagging if they never listen and seldom offer to help?

Well, at least she deserves her breakfast, so she can feel good about eating it. She has already eaten a slice of day-old bread, a little leftover canned peach from last night’s dinner, and she is finishing up a small serving of Special K cereal. She had put the cereal in that old tea cup with the broken handle rather than use one of the new bowls. It works just as well. She had made herself a little coffee in that old pot she had purchased at a yard sale. She’ll keep the grounds for a cup later on today.

Alice rises from the table, pausing. She wouldn’t mind a bit more to eat. There is emptiness still. She doesn’t feel quite satisfied. Maybe she’ll have just a little more toast. Half a slice with a smidgen of that strawberry jam she made last summer. There is a small jar of the jam in the cabinet above the stove, Alice recalls, hidden behind the electric mixer. She reaches into the cabinet, sliding the mixer to the side as she fingers the rugged cut-glass surface of the jam jar. She lifts it out and places it on the counter.

She takes a slice of the white bread and cuts it in half, then inserts it into the toaster. She would have just this with a bit of her jam and another sip of coffee. Only a sip. Alice sits on the tall kitchen stool beside the stove while waiting for her toast. Gingerly, she tips the tiny aluminum coffee pot forward, allowing a thin stream to dribble into her cup. She shouldn’t have more than another quarter cup. She needs to ration the coffee. Coffee is another bad habit of hers.

The saving grace of the extra coffee was the inexpensive pot. She had bought it for a mere twenty-five cents, just a quarter, and it worked fine.

Alice removes the bread from the toaster and spreads it with a veneer of the strawberry jam. She bites off a pea-sized corner, allowing the flavors to settle on her tongue and for the toast to soften before she swallows. It has just the right amount of sweetness, she notes. Many of the berries were preserved whole or in small pieces, but their flesh is soft and gives way readily, almost melting in her mouth. The berries aren’t gummy or sticky, either, like they are in the commercial jam. The liquid is just thick enough to keep the berries suspended.

As Alice savors the toast and jam, she recalls the hurried breakfasts before leaving for school years ago, the thick slices of white bread and butter, the fresh milk. They had to shake the jar to mix the cream in. That was long before homogenization. Alice thinks of her brother Henry, drinking milk right from the jar when he thought no one was looking. She had to rely on Henry to drive her to school during those first couple of years of high school. They were always late.

The principal at Blackfoot High School, Mr. Simpkins, could never understand why they didn’t arrive on time. He didn’t punish Henry, though. Maybe it was that smile of his that charmed him. However, Alice frequently had to stay for detention at the end of the day. It was held in a cramped classroom next to Mr. Simpkins’ office. The room was old and musty-smelling, probably full of mold and mildew. She was one of the only obedient students in detention, one of the very few who had to stay for tardiness. The others usually stayed for misbehavior of some kind … Michael, for instance, was the class clown. Michael had to stay in detention regularly… Michael … . He could be rude, but he could be a lot of fun too.

It occurs to Alice that she needs someone to talk to. It would be nice to share her memories with a friend. But she doesn’t have friends. Did she ever have any real, close friends? She had never really talked about Michael, about the night of the dance, or the sad news of Michael’s death a few years later. But she didn’t want to dwell on those memories. That just caused heartache. And wasn’t it the good things that mattered the most?

She remembers that Michael was kind of a smart aleck, especially in the classroom. She couldn’t recall now just what he would say to get himself in trouble, but it was usually something that made the class laugh… .

She did remember that one day, he whistled at Miss Stolver, a young and pretty English teacher who had just started at Blackfoot. When she walked into the classroom, he whistled. His whistle was long and shrill, and it seemed to come from the front of the classroom, even though Michael was sitting in the last row. Everyone in the class burst out laughing. They all knew it was Michael because he had learned to throw his voice. He was always showing off. Miss Stolver knew who it was right away too. She blushed to a bright red, but then she turned and faced Michael, looking pretty serious. She told him he’d be detained after school. He looked back sheepishly and said, “Yes, Ma’am,” but then grinned.

Alice did like Michael, of course, even after the dance. But she was nervous after that and angry too. She just didn’t know how to show it. She didn’t know how to act around him anymore. If Alice was talking to a friend, how would she put it?

She might say that she had always liked how free and easy he could be. He just didn’t care about things. He was friendly to her but a tease. His teasing was good-natured at first. He had sat behind her in detention one day and poked her in the back. This was before the dance, the dance which ruined everything. Hey Alice, he had said, I like your pretty hair. Can I have it? She had long, straight dark brown hair back then, which Edith sometimes braided, to keep off her face. When he tugged her braid, she turned around, frowning, but she remembered feeling a bit of a thrill as if a puff of air rose up inside her. Michael grinned at her, holding one hand behind his back, asking, “do you want it back?” Instinctively, she felt for the braid and was reassured to find it tight, heavy, and still intact at the back of her neck. He responded, “Gotcha!” She had smiled then and turned back around, not knowing what to say. She had never been good at coming up with quick responses, especially when teased.

Alice looks up from her toast and coffee and stares at the kitchen wallpaper with its lacy green ferns on the shiny white background. It’s cheerful wallpaper. She still likes it. Alice imagines that Susan Thurman, her neighbor, is sitting across from her, nodding and smiling and waiting to hear more about her high school days.

So, back to high school … where had she left off? She had wanted to talk about Henry. Well, with Henry, it was kind of the same way. She liked Henry for the same reasons that she liked Michael. He could be so easy and casual about things...