The snow stopped a few minutes ago, an opportunity to stock up on apple juice. It is quiet and still outside, as white as any laundry detergent could make it. No breeze, no leaf rattle, no traffic, no aircraft, no birds, no water dripping from the gutters, nobody on the street, ill-defined by subtle parallel depressions curving up the hill where the ditches are buried a foot below.
The plough comes through, clearing a narrow lane and blocking all the driveways with a couple of feet of compressed snow and ice. It is Albrecht in his shiny black Hummer; an orange blade is mounted in front with “The Boss” printed on it in big black letters. He turns around at the corner and comes back the other way, widening the lane he first cleared and pushing another pile into the ditch opposite.
He stops and opens the window.
“Yo Fred!”
I climb the obstacle he has just pushed across my path and kick a footing into the top to talk to him from there.
“Albrecht, thanks for clearing the road.”
Now more people are coming out. A snow-covered Kia stops behind him with a little lime green paint showing through. I can see further down past the branches dropping white cascades onto the plowed path as the sun rises high enough to warm them. Two more vehicles are coming. The white Mercedes must be moments out of the garage. It hasn’t got a flake on its gleaming metal curves and then, as it stops behind the green Kia the windshield is covered by a deluge from branches above.
“Fred, I have got to keep moving, and I am only going in circles.”
I walk on to the Safeway when the cars have passed in Albrecht’s path. Engine exhaust settles out of the air replaced by the odor of fabric softener, which lingers in my nose like a sweet insidious disease. The Lighthouse gas station has only two pumps clear. A blue Suburban pushes slowly past the pumps with snow curling up into the curved blade like a breaking wave. Faruk mans the island with a broom sweeping clouds of flakes into the path of the plow.
It must be Daisy up ahead. I can see her bowler hat above the roofs of a few cars parked in the spaces cleared near the entrance. She enters with her shopping bag hanging empty from the end of her long arm. She has her black ski pants on and a pea coat on with yards of orange scarf wrapped around her neck so many times that brilliant sunlit color is spilling off her shoulders.
I catch her up inside looking at a wire basket full of discounted breads.
“Hi Fred, do these look like a good deal?”
“You get a lot for your money.”
“Yeah Fred, that’s what I am looking at too.”
“Might be stale though, check the dates.”
“Oh I do, I do. Have to … my budget is tight.”
“Do you have time for something at the Pie Shop?”
We walk over to the meat counter. Daisy picks up a packet of plastic wrapped chicken thighs, on sale.
“Ah, well, maybe … these have more flavor than white meat and they’re pretty good after about eight hours in the crock pot.”
I pay at the self-checkout with Daisy ahead of me. She puts her groceries in a plastic bag and winds it up into a package and then places that into another plastic bag, and puts them both in her shopping bag. We walk out together and follow a long narrow path, left by a single pass of a snow blower, all the way to the front of the pie shop.
We come to a shiny trickle across our path as sunrays heat up the black-top and snow melts. Daisy throws some snow down and steps through without slipping. Now she takes more snow and drops it into her shopping bag.
“That will keep my chicken cold.”
She claps her hand against her side to get the snow off her gloves and Mrs. Rutherford opens the door for us at the Pie Shop.
“Come on, come on, you are the first today. I only just got things warmed up here. There’s no help yet so you’re going to have to wait a minute.”
I sit down by a window and Daisy hangs her shopping bag packed with snow on the back of her chair. We look out and watch the
drips falling off the roof and icicles forming over the doorway.
Daisy is still standing by her chair. She puts her bowler on the table
with a purple paper folded and sticking up from the band,
and unwinds her orange scarf, gathering it in her left hand like coils of rope.
“So Daisy, how have you been?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Too long to tell?”
“God, no one knows it all yet.”
“Do you?”
“No, come to think of it. There’s still a long way to go, at least I hope … if I don’t loose the house that is.”
“Ouch! You mean you’re behind?”
“Oh I haven’t made any payments for two years!”
“I had no idea Daisy, I mean I thought you inherited the place.”
“I did, but there was a lien on it, then I had to borrow more to get the roof fixed and some plumbing and other stuff.”
“So what happened?”
“Bush’s financial crash happened, at least that’s what Lark calls it.
I mean I am not getting enough jobs.”
“How about the window for Jake?”
“Not really … he did give me a few hundred to get started and then I
never heard any more, and I bought a lot of glass.”
“Well, do you blame it all on Bush?”
“I don’t really know what I think … you know it’s all about greed … yes I blame greed!”
“Yup! it’s greed that makes the system go around!”
“So yes, right … you know there are laws to protect against this kind of crash but what happened? You know, Lark says Clinton repealed
something … that protection I mean … You know Clinton! You know, how did that happen?”
“It must be awkward dealing with Boyd on one side and Lark on the other!”
“Not really. You know Boyd is just following what Albrecht says. He still has to find out what he thinks himself …”
Mrs. Rutherford calls from behind the counter.
“Folks, you want coffee or tea?”
“Do you have hot chocolate?”
“If you don’t mind it out of a package. I can’t make the good stuff right now, hon.”
Daisy walks over to the counter and turns to me and asks if I want
want hot chocolate, and I do. She orders two.
“Its on me Daisy!”
I get up and move towards the counter
“I got it Fred.”
“I can pay for my own at least.”
“Its okay, go sit down.”
Mrs. Rutherford uses the espresso machine to steam the drinks into a hot sweet froth in a tall sky blue cup. I linger, contemplating the pale brown crusts undulating above a depth of fruit in two, thick, unsliced pies. They seem like sacred objects carefully centered on the shelf under the protective glass counter.
“How about a slice of cherry/peach or apple?”
“No thanks I got enough sugar here.”
Daisy picks up the two mugs and takes them back to the table.
I follow and sit down. She offers me one, handle first.
“Do you want to sit down?”
“Oh, in a minute.”
She stands by the chair I expect her to sit in, sipping, and looks around the room over the top of her mug. She holds the mug out at arms length and looks at it.
“I am just stuck on the island of my perceptions.”
“I suppose we all are in a way.”
“No, I don’t think Boyd’s perceptions preoccupy him much. He kind of looks inward, he feels a lot more than he can see.”
“Don’t you think perception can grow through conversation and discussion?”
“Well, understanding can.”
“Look at that dirty great mountain of filthy snow!”
“That’s one way to clear the parking lot, just pile it up.”
“Yeah, like debts … except they don’t melt.”
“Both national and personal …”
“You know Fred, Albrecht has come around.”
“He has? In what sense?”
“Boyd said he is following Trump for the Republican nomination.
He says Trump supports, a single payer health system, women’s right to choose, and he even said that Bush screwed up when he invaded Iraq!”
“You mean those are his reasons for supporting Trump?”
“Right, I don’t get it. I thought Trump was conservative and all that.”
“I don’t get it either. I thought Albrecht toed the Republican party line.”
“He did until he and Boyd started listening to Trump.”
“That is hard to believe.”
“I don’t believe I’ll be able to keep the house, you know, and if I was an entrepreneur I’d probably have lots of ideas … well I wouldn’t … I mean I’d be rich like Trump I guess.”
“You are an entrepreneur! Artists have to be.”
“Am I?”
“As Trump can tell you entrepreneurs go broke too.”
“No they go bankrupt! But he knows how to come out of it with money.”
“Have you consulted a lawyer?”
“Oh sure, spent seven hundred dollars I don’t have and filed for bankruptcy so the bank can’t sell the place out from under me.”
Daisy puts down her mug and walks around the table to sit so she is facing out of the window. She is facing the parking lot.
“Spending money you don’t have is not an easy trick.”
“No, Boyd said I am ‘Trumpeting’, because he made his fortune with borrowed money, went bankrupt and now look at him.”
Daisy is turning her head at an odd angle.
“Your neck hurt?”
“No, can you see that reflection?”
“What, can you point it out?”
“Well if you get it at the right angle the whole room is reflected in this window so you see the inside and outside together.”
“Don’t think I can see it from here.”
“Well I am in that position. I got a loan I can’t pay back to stay in my house I don’t own that is my home, that I can’t live in any more.”
“So you bought some time.”
“Yeah, my borrowed time has run out too. I got the letter last week.
The bank is going to sell my house in March.”
“Oh Daisy, what are you going to do?”
“Well, I have another letter from my home preservation specialist saying they are working on a settlement.”
“What does that mean?”
“They don’t know what they are talking about!”
“Well, what do you do now?”
“I might move into my car.”
“You have a car?”
“Sure, it’s an old Ford Taurus station wagon, curvy with a really cool back window. I drive up to Maine in it every summer.”
“You sure it runs?”
“Boyd drove it to Richmond back in the Fall.”
“Can’t you camp out with any one?”
“Oh maybe, I haven’t asked any one.”
“What about Diddlie or Artie?”
“I don’t want to ask … either one might help, but suppose they didn’t … God! how horrible! … I am thinking of having a nomad period you know. Ditch most of my stuff, like the whole house and contents, and put what I need in the car and take off out of this snow.”
“What an idea!”
“I could use public rest rooms, visit charities for meals and read at libraries, and paint in good weather.”
“What about gas?”
“Plastic.”
