NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
We, can see ourselves reflected in the windows. Christmas lights come on in the parking lot. What is outside and what is in? One of the miniature Christmas trees and their lights out in the lot appear over bel’s head like electric jewels on her crown. Traffic in the congested parking lot is maneuvering, unobstructed through the tables and chairs of the Pie shop. A couple enter wearing floppy red Santa hats with white tassels hanging down on the lowered hoods of their red parkas. The open door admits cold air and a blast of car hooters from outside, then the crunch and tinkle of colliding vehicles. The door closes behind the two youthful Santas.
Felicity Tock opens the Pie Shop’s glass door for Gertie Stone. Big white Alph’s round face appears in the opening, nosing rich wafts of the interior, unknown to its present occupants. He pushes past and walks in with canine smile and thick furry face reminiscent of a friendly polar bear. Sniffs bel’s down coat from the top of the chair-back where it hangs, to the floor. Where it pools in a gathering of damp down-filled clumps. Taking his time, he runs his nose along the edge of the table between us, delicately, never quite touching.
“Oh! Hi there.”
“It’s Alpha dog! Look who’s here.”
Gertie Stone’s shoulders slant to the left as if arthritis has her walking along a hillside.
“I am getting slower by the day, bel. Pretty soon it will take me all day to get the crapper and back.”
Felicity unbuttons her shearling coat. Keeps it on and helps Gertie out of her deep blue gabardine cape with white scarf. A golden fox leaps from a round broach at her neck. She leans on her silver topped cane and presses the arthritic knuckles of her other hand on the dragon table.
“You got my chair? Where’s the chair?”
“Right under your butt Mama!”
“Well, it’s too low.”
“It is a standard chair. Same as all the others. Just keep lowering.”
“I’ll be on the goddamn floor soon.”
Felicity pushes the chair further under Gerties girth to touch the back of her knees.
“Ya! Okay I am down, stiff, too old to live and too young to die.”
“Said, Jethro Tull.”
“I don’t know Jethro, Fred.”
“It is the name of a rock band from way back.”
Alph tries to settle under the table but his shoulder moves it into bel’s and my lap.
“Out Alph! Out!”
He backs out from his attempt and looks up at Felicity, panting.
“Okay Alph, come on. Come here.”
Alph walks around the back of Gertie’s chair and with Felicity’s guidance and settles under the table where it abuts the window wall.
Felicity leans down from behind to speak into Gertie’s ear.
“You want to keep your beret on?”
“Hell, yes.”
Gertie has her hands up to check the wooly orange beret tipped to the right from the top of her head.
“Fred, I spent the sixties listening to Bach and trying to get my hands into his Two- and Three-Part Inventions.”
She holds up arthritic fingers clawing above her palm.
“And what did you hear?”
“An unearthly combination of order and grace, adventure and discipline, an expansive mind!”
“You grabbed hold of Johan Sebastian with your ear!”
“I ignored the sound of spoiled self-centered white fools, yelling, ‘freedom’ from the dope crazed eddies of their melting middle class minds.”
“Okay Gertie, I get it, alliteration and all. The sixties were not your time.”
“That’s your generation, you know.”
“Is that supposed to mean something, Fil?”
Felicity turns away. Goes to the coffee bar. She glances at the selections posted on the LED Screen hung on the wall behind Mrs. Rutherford and her help. The videos featuring local customer participation are turned down. Though we can see fragments of their sequences as we glance up at them reflected in the windows.
“Was that dismal decade anybody’s time, bel?”
“Sure.”
“Aha, like who’s?”
“In this country at least, the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement.”
“Well, it’s too bad, the two got mixed up in each-other.”
“Why?”
“Because, bel, what could be more important than civil rights? It is a story as long as our disgraceful history…. Felicity, what is it?”
“It wasn’t all disgraceful.”
“Okay, some fine aspirations and also a cruel and lasting compromise.”
“For that admission, here’s your coffee and croissant.”
Gertie takes a sniff and then a sip, while Felicity sits down next to her with a tall blue mug.
“Ah! Café Crème, just the way I like it with an almond croissant.”
“It’s Espresso.”
“Well, I remember it from our Paris days.”
“Okay, I have my Jasmine tea. What have you got bel?”
“Darjeeling, always.”
“Your cane is about to slip off the table.”
“Grab it, will you, Fil?”
“I can’t reach from here. You can.”
Gertie looks aside, grabs her cane in her claws, less than halfway up. She leans back and straightens her shoulders. Holds her cane up as if it were a baton with the silver handle above her head like a bright sign of authority.
“Ah, you know.”
She pauses to get our attention.
“It, I mean the civil rights story, passes through the sixties and continues to this moment. While that war was a blundering quagmire, both politically and practically, so it muddied the waters.”
She lowers the cane and hands it to Fil.
“Four o’clock and it is dark already!”
Fil hunches up in the sheep and lanolin of her coat collar.
“Happens every year Fil, winter Solstice.
“I think the sleet is getting thicker, Fred.”
“It’s a mess out there.”
“We have the biggest mess of all now.”
“You mean climate change Gertie?”
“Bel, I mean we humans, damn fools, evolved to the point of self-reflection only to distract ourselves in an adolescent commercial fog!”
“You are in a good mood today!”
“Yeah Fred, pain both inside and out.”
“You might try those meds prescribed for you.”
“No thanks Fil. No thanks to death before my time.”
“Yes, desensitized to pain is to be desensitized…”
“That’s the point bel. When I can’t stand it anymore, I’ll damn well end it.”
Felicity grabs Gertie’s wrist.
“Don’t be so arrogant!”
“Just matter of fact my darling.”
“Just stubborn foolishness. Puts you in a bad mood.”
“Okay, so I am victim of pathetic fallacy, okay, I’ll take it.”
Bel holds her warming mug of Darjeeling between her palms.
“Are you now driven to introspection?”
“You mean, am I herded into my navel by whimpering dogs of regret?”
“How about wandering there on a quest for clarity?”
“My thoughts and impulses are as plain as day.”
“Consider it morally.”
“What is a moral impulse? An impulse is an impulse.”
“Motive is really the key, I think.”
“Ah, motive! A mystery in its subtlety and a kick in the teeth in its clarity.”
“Looking at motive started me looking for something I could love in everyone I met.”
“Bel, let’s leave Polly Anna lost in her wooly wilderness.”
Felicity leans forward toward bel.
“That sounds impossibly challenging, bel!”
“Well, it is perfectly Surreal!”
Gertie grabs the edge of the table in one hand and tries to make a fist with the other.
“I keep hearing people use that word, and I am willing to bet they have never heard of Andre Breton!”
“No Andre is history. We are living now, a new crisis, a new improved diet plan, a way to get rich by clicking, ‘here’ and then I look at the crows and starlings.”
“You are no Maldoror.”
“No I am the Anti Lautreamont.”
“Bel, don’t get squishy on me, please!”
“There is nothing squishy about a crow. Corvids include crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, all smart, black and easy to love.”
“Bel, have you lost it? Ornithology is not my subject.”
“Are you saying we should all fall for starlings and the Corvids?”
“No Fil, I am saying let’s keep a positive vibe.”
“Oh! Well okay, yeah, my reception varies.”
“So, what do you find so surreal about this love vibe of yours?”
“Gertie, it is transformational. Life is more interesting.”
“What is so interesting?
“People”
“What about hate, disgust, prejudice and prejudgment, what about aggression and force and coercion?”
“It is all there.”
“So, you admit to those impulses?”
“When possible, I choose to let them pass.”
“You can’t choose an impulse! It is there, like a slap in the face.”
“No, I choose where to pay attention.”
“Aha, you claim too much!”
“No more than; ‘the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table’.
