Mrs. McDermott's Morning

The house was deathly quiet and chilled. The shades were raised. The sun was up. But the greyest of light was all that penetrated the thick November sky and shadows lingered in the deep corners of the kitchen. Her every move across the room was deliberate, each sound amplified, her mind in search of distraction.

The coffee splashed into her cup and sounded in her head like a garden hose spilling onto the patio. Her spoon clanged like a fire bell as she stirred in the sugar and cream, watching the chemicals at play as they blended with the dark roasted brew. As she moved to the table, her slippers scraped across the tile floor like sandpaper on a rusty gutter. Odd, she thought, to be thinking in terms of simile on a day like today. Then again, what else was there to do but wait for the phone to ring and to think? Time, after all, was moving like cold sludge down a slight and stubborn slope.

As she shuffled past the floor vent the dry air rippled her soft cotton nightgown, but still it sounded to Mrs. McDermott like a flag unfurling in the wind or a canvas tarp being spread over an open grave. She cringed at that thought and pressed a fist against her ear to block the sound, to block the thought.

Little Scarlett’s painted nails tinkled along the linoleum as the old dog made her way to her bed in the corner and flopped in exhausted from the effort. And so the thought returned.

She strummed her fingers on the wall phone. It was 7:15—too early to call.

Nine steps from the counter to the table. She counted. On the third, she had checked the notes on the refrigerator, arranged the magnets. She slurped her coffee. The sound echoed off the papered walls and sounded disconcertingly loud as if someone had blown hard through a torn balloon. She looked over her steamed glasses and around the room to see if anyone heard.

But no one else was there. How silly, she thought and laughed, half-heartedly.

On the fourth step she had stretched her back and the sound of snapping tree limbs filled her head. Like a bad song, she thought, I can’t get these similes out of my head. She paused to turn on the light, scratching off a bit of grime from the faceplate. Again, she looked at the phone, then her watch and sighed. She studied her nails and then scraped the grime from under them. Brushing the residue on her gown, she stepped twice toward the table and stopped in front of the laundry room door and tried to remember when it was painted. She saw that he had not really patched the nail hole, but had painted over it. It looked okay. You couldn’t really tell.

She stared at the door…at the paint…at the lines the brush had made…at the streaks the roller left. And she wondered how many times she had carried laundry through that door. How many loads of baby clothes and softball uniforms and towels and summer clothes and fall sweatshirts?

She loved the Fall, the sunny days when crisp colorful leaves blew across the deck and swirled around her flowerpots, when the smell like that of burnt cork still hung in the air.
But she didn’t like this kind, not this grey, lifeless, lonely kind of Fall. She thought that it wouldn’t be much of a bother after all, being able to carry a load of laundry through that door twenty years from now. She set her coffee on the table and went to sit. She froze when the phone rang. Her mouth went dry. It rang a second time and her heart began to race, but she couldn’t move. The machine picked up. All she heard was a click.

It wasn’t him, she thought as she sat and sipped her coffee. Too early. Too early for the doctor to call. She scrunched her nose at the coffee, realizing it needed more cream. She swept some crumbs into her hand and rose slowly from the table, scraping the feet of the wooden chair across the tile. She brushed the crumbs into the trash and passing the needlework on her way to the refrigerator she paused. It was the one about friendship. She thought about picking up the phone to call Tess. No, maybe after. Maybe she could use a friendly voice more after.

She tugged awkwardly on the refrigerator door and felt an uncomfortable pull where the stitch was. It was only a small stitch. It was on the side, where they went in. She examined her other side, compared, weighed as if in judgment of their continued purpose, of their necessity, then wrapped her nightgown tighter and pulled on the door again. The rubber insulation made a sucking sound like pulling flypaper from one’s cheek. Now there’s a happy thought, she thought.

She looked at the clock for the umteenth time. He was supposed to call by eleven. It’ll probably be his nurse.

I’m just looking for the other twenty percent, she said. Just give me the other twenty percent.

He was confident, he had said—the doctor. Eighty percent chance it was benign.

She forgot what she was looking for in the refrigerator and shut the door. She reached on top like she had done countless times before and pulled down her cigarettes. She stared at them, crinkling the plastic. She smelled them with her eyes closed, then looked toward the trash and back at the pack. She opened the nearest cabinet and tossed them in. The door snapped shut like the final tap of Gregory Hines’ famous shoes. “Where’s the applause?” she said out loud. “Where’s the applause?”

Then the phone rang, and rang again. 10:50. Suddenly, she wished she had another 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes to be free of the monster, the one that got her mother and her sister. She picked up on the third ring and listened. She had always said he sounded like Gandhi, or at least what she imagined Gandhi must have sounded like. And now she appreciated that.

When she was through listening and thanking the doctor for calling, Mrs. McDermott kissed the phone and set it gently back into its cradle. She wasted no time in picking it back up and furiously dialing her friend. And across the miles, the sound of each other’s voices made all the difference.