“I’ll tell you what, get back to your home. Get your feet on the ground.” A saliva web formed in the corner of her mouth as she spoke. I wondered how many days she’d gone without her teeth. Then, I wondered if she had to brush or if she just needed gargle with Listerine. She hacked up something and spat it into her red paisley handkerchief. Her milky blue eyes paused roaming the horizon of the restaurant and landed on the salt shaker at our glass topped table. Grasping it, she brought it closely to her eyes and squinted. “Why the hell do they put rice in those things? If I wanted Chinese food, I would have gone to a Chinese food joint.”
I looked out the window unto barren flat land at twilight. Giant robot insects dotted the landscape: the oil derricks methodically pumped up and down. They looked like a mass orgy from an apocalyptic-industrial porn movie. All of the structures banging the barren, cracked earth in the same hypnotic rhythm. No passion. No pleasure. No pain, just the hum of metal on metal and the smell of petroleum products.
She coughed again into her cloth and fell silent. I couldn’t tell if she wanted a response or was zoning into space. I looked over and saw the same people in the diner. Mr. Lewis and his wife sat in the corner booth, silent and looking past each other. He sat tall, with knife in his right hand and fork in his left. He cut through his chicken fried steak with mechanical slices. Mrs. Lewis squeezed her lemon on her salad: it was her staple meal regardless of the restaurant or time of day. But in all the years of her doing this, she never lost any weight. I wondered how long they have been here. Why did they come?
I looked back at Virginia. She had not redirected her gaze. I couldn’t tell if this was standard old person behavior or maybe she had a stroke. Then, she gallantly stood up and went to the starlight mints stored adjacent to the cash register. They were a cheap knock off brand that tasted like stale toothpaste. After she wrestled off the plastic wrapper, she threw the pink and white mint it into her pink, slobbering mouth: it was caked with some white film. I had never thought about it before that moment, but all old people have that white filmy shit on their mouth. Was this plaque that looking to settle on teeth?
Virginia didn’t make growing old look fun. She walked hunched over and mumbled regularly about unintelligible things. If it weren’t for the fact that she was my neighbor growing up, I never would have known her. She had become the crazy cat lady who lived in the scary, unkempt house on the corner of the cul-de-sac. She was also my piano teacher. I never thought that she was weird when I was growing up. It wasn’t until I started coming back home from college that I realized her peculiarities. And I think that she could sense my judgments. Which led to her unsolicited advice after dinner.
Apparently, she was a beautiful woman. So beautiful that a rich German man fell in love with her. They met somewhere on the east coast when she was going through music conservatory. He convinced her to marry him and move back to his estate in Bavaria. She never finished her music program. I saw a picture of the two of them together. She wore a ball gown that reminded me of some quintessential Disney movie character. He was much older than she was and looked like he might have been handsome in his younger years. Behind them were two marble staircases the led to a mezzanine. I assume that it was their house. I’d only seen the picture once, it was on display in her house: I saw it after one of my lessons. When I started to ask questions, she quickly grabbed the photo from my hands and ushered me out of the house.
“Why do you want to get away so bad?” It was a casual question.
I carefully weighed my options. Honestly, there were plenty of reasons. Beauty existed outside the realm of our county. People here believed in the ethics of Wal-Mart and McDonald's. My feet itched to look and see and taste and feel elsewhere. The people around me were satisfied with marriage and children and houses and cubicles...and I wanted to kill them. I wanted to send them postcards from far away lands to both provoke jealousy and prove to them that I was more courageous than them. Every time I come back I feel like I am putting my legs into the green corduroy pants of my childhood. The pants up to my thighs then, the blood flow gets cut off from my legs. They go numb and feel as though they are swollen and going to pop. But I chose not to mention any of these reasons: I deflected.
“Why did you come back?” Touche. Try to put me in a corner, Virginia.
If she could have found my eyes (and read my thoughts) I think she would have glared at me. Instead, she softened and exhaled deeply through her mouth. She thanked the waitress; I led her out the door and we began to walk home.
“Andre wasn’t the man that I thought he was.”
I waited, thinking that my silence would hold some type of power or wisdom that would convince her to tell me more.
“So I ditched his ass in Germany and moved back home. I was broke and my parents needed some help. Any more questions, Sherlock?”
I doubted the simplicity of the story. I assumed that something in regard to Germany and WWII played a part in her decision to divorce Andre. I shook my head and we walked home in silence. The derricks continued pumping to our right: giant grasshoppers flexing their legs.
I could tell that she appreciated my smaller steps and the support of my right arm, but I could also tell that she was disgusted that her body had brought her to this place in life. I wondered if she still played the piano: I noticed that the signed had been knocked over in her yard. There was rust and dirt and cobwebs on it: it had been down for a while. The sign, “Piano Lessons by Virginia,” had been anchored in front of her house since I can remember. She’s fought through the years of vandalism. Before puberty hit me, asked my mom what “Piano Lessons by Virgin” meant: that prompted the sex talk. I didn’t ask my mom many questions after that day. Virginia unlocked her door and turned around. Then, she searched the air with her hands.
“I’m reaching for your face, ding-dong.”
As I leaned my head down toward her hands, she grabbed both of my cheeks. My stubble sought out each of the wrinkles on her fingers, palms. She smiled, “You’re a man, now.” Her eyes began to water, they were still roaming the horizon. I had forgotten how strong her hands were: everything else about her was frail, but she played scales on my face, registering memories and transferring emotions through trills and improvised arpeggios.
“Son, you must atone for some things in your life. And when you know what these things are, don’t run from them like I did. You become a shell of who you really are.” She gave me a sloppy toothless kiss on the cheek and exited into her overly air-conditioned house. From behind the closed door she yelled, “And keep playing piano!”
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