Mrs. Poston never batted an eye anymore about being asked her age. She'd lived a long time and wanted everyone to know she was eighty-nine and she would always answer with evident pride,"I am eighty-nine years old.", as if she'd just announced she was two hundred and ten years old. She was proud she had outfoxed the hurdles of Life, all the comedy and tragedy of it, and was now enjoying that final stage of her life, what she liked to refer to as her Waltz. When distant relatives from across the country would call, to occasionally check on her, she would tell them with great conviction,"Of course I'm fine. I'm waltzing." and just saying this made her smile. Of course, her answer led these distant relatives to believe she was actually becoming batty. She had lived long enough to know what a phone call with her would generate around their dinner tables.
"The poor old dear, she can't possibly be happy living in that little town all by herself. And with her strange answers, I think she's becoming dangerously senile."
Of course, the distant relatives never did anything about it other than call. And Mrs.Poston was quite happy about that. She did not want her Waltz interrupted by her relatives' Two Steps or Lindy Hops or whatever dances the young people nowadays were doing. Mrs.Poston had done her Two Steps and Lindy Hops, with great vigor back then when she could, but even as a young woman it was always the Waltz she loved the most anyway. Romantic and slow and graceful. And now, she only wanted to Waltz. Part of her even thought of herself now as romantic and slow and graceful. And she rather liked feeling that way.
The only part about her Waltz she found occasionally difficult, were the moments that painful lack of her late husbands partnership pricked at her heart. She had long since been past and suffered through the initial stages of her grief, those chest wracking sobs and days without eating and wishing she had gone with him over The Great Divide, and she had shorn herself up. Now when those little bites of Grief came back, she would shake them off and say into the air,"You stop it Grief! You go away now. You took as much as I can give you." and then her mind would be on something else. Other times she would close her eyes, imagine her late husband smiling at her and hearing him tell her that he loved her, and she would get goose pimples on her skin. In the back of her mind, she suspected on some level those goose pimples came because he was standing next to her with his arm around her shoulders, even though she couldn't see him. But maybe, just maybe, he could see her. And that thought comforted her too.
It had been ten years without him. About three years after his death, after Grief had stopped kicking her while she was down, she felt herself emerge as a new person. Well, a different person anyway. She was the same overall, but instead of becoming old and worried she became old and bold. And she tried to be as bold, even if it meant being silly, as she reasonably could without being put away in a nursing home. There's a fine line for old people and they cross it only when their behavior makes others uncomftorable. So, Mrs.Poston was often bold or silly with people when they spoke with her, but never purposely made them uncomftorable. Except once.
There was a man at her church, Mr.E.Z.Gooch. In his early fifties, tall and imposing, he and his wife Barbara often took up various roles from leading the hymns to organizing social events for the members to ( some said ) even suggesting relevant topics for their pastor to address. He had been a very successful businessman and retired early, coming into town and buying up a great deal of property in Mrs.Postons neighborhood, including the very large plantation style house just a ways down from her own. Mr.Gooch had lived in the town as a young child, grown up there and then left for college and did not return until recently. Now retired but still full of energy, he and his wife were determined to use that energy previous directed into building a successful business to building themselves into everyone else's business in town. They ingratitaed themselves into town buy financing school improvements, relandscaping the town park and installing new play equipment for the children and new benches and drinking fountains, and of course invested in the church.
Mrs.Poston wasn't fooled for a minute by any of it. She knew Mr.Gooch and he was the same boy now as he was as a child. And he was a little monstor as a child as far as she was concerned.
During their intial rounds of inviting neighbors to their house warming party, they'd hand delivered their invitations. An easy feat in very small town. When he and Barbara came by her house to give her the invitation, she invited them in for some lemonade like any civilized person would do. Mrs.Poston was not, after all, a savage.
"Mrs.Poston, I'd like you to meet my wife Barbara." he had said at the door. She smiled at Barbara but caught something on the woman's face a younger woman than herself would not have noticed. Barbara was a defeated wife. The kind of wife who had looked the other way one too many times, the kind who always hoped one day her husband would feel as adoring towards her as she did him until she realized he never would and by that time, she felt too old to start over. The kind of wife who had suffered a too self-centered man who spawned too self-centered children. And everyone would forever tell her how sweet she was. Mrs.Poston knew that Barbara probably hated being referred to as 'sweet' anymore. And she laughed to herself later when she thought that perhaps Barbara had an interior landscape full of fantasies where she was like the action movies today featuring gorgeous and lethal female leads. If Barbara were her daughter, she would sit her down and say,"Darling, what you need is to go be someone different for awhile. Go buy a ticket to the South Pacific just for yourself. When you get there, go drink and gamble and have your way with the native boys and swim and go dancing and swing from the trees. Then come back home and ask yourself if you really want to resume your life as a doormat." But, Barbara was not her daughter. She was E.Z.'s wife. That little monstor.
And so there the couple sat, E.Z. babbling his way through his life and how it led him back to his roots and now he's having a big welcoming party and won't she attend? Mrs.Poston stared at him when he asked the question. She stared a long time before answering. So long, he and Barabara nervously smiled and looked back and forth at each other and back to Mrs.Poston and back at each other again. Mrs.Poston knew exactly how long she could sustain her pause before E.Z. would reflexively ask if she was alright. And she waited just that long.
E.Z. leaned a little forward, as if this shift in position would help Mrs.Poston understand him better, as if he would really seem sincere as opopposed to just appearing sincere, and said,"Mrs.Poston? Are you, um, are you OK?" Mrs.Poston tilted her head at him a little and replied,"I'm not sure. Maybe I'm having a stroke." and then giggled a little when E.Z.'s chin fell open.
"Oh you close your mouth you silly boy. I'm not having a stroke!" and then she laughed out loud and Barbara laughed outloud and E.Z. laughed outloud.
"Thank you very much for troubling to stop by and invite me to your party, especially you Barbara since I imagine of the two of you, you will be doing most of the work. But no dears, I won't be coming to your party." and she sat there. E.Z. reacted exactly as a man who was not used to hearing the word 'No' very often. In his mind, every nuance of life was a battle of some kind and he had to believe he had at least attempted to win them. "But we go so far back Mrs.Poston and I was hoping my favorite lady in the town would come." Mrs.Poston made a quick glance at Barbara, whose eyes glanced towards the floor and then up at her husband, avoiding all connection to hers, and said,"E.Z. you were a little devil then and you're a little devil now. Notice I said 'little' E.Z. And don't you patronize and condescend to me in my own home. Now you extended your invitation and I had the good manners to listen to you extend it. Now you should have the good manners of accepting that I do not wish to attend. But I will say you have a very lovely wife and I hope to see more of her in the future." and Mrs.Poston put the emphasis on 'her'. A shadow passed across E.Z.'s face before he batted it away inside his mind long enough to be able to say their good-byes before he said to her what he really thought.
Assuming, like many people are wont to do, that Mrs.Poston was too old to have good hearing, he said a bit too loudly to his wife on the way to the next neighbors house,"Can you believe that old hag?! Who does she think she is to talk to me like that? I'm glad her husbands not alive because if he were I'd take my indigination out on him."
And Mrs.Poston chuckled behind her screen door,"Not on your best day E.Z. Not then, and not now."
Ever since then, E.Z. had made it a point to make sure there were other church members standing around as he patronzied Mrs.Poston. He would cross from one aisle to the next just to do it too. For awhile she had let him get away with it, finding most everything he said too boring to respond comically to anyway and she thought eventually he would tire of getting his pound of flesh. But for weeks he had not and Mrs.Poston finally told herself enough was enough.
Standing just outside the church door one day having a chat with a few of the other older ladies, though none quite as old as herself, E.Z. once again made his way over. First, he spoke to the other ladies in his nearly-charming way and Sunday social posture. In the meantime, Pastor Gilsmith had also strolled over to say hello to them all, along with a couple of other men. One the town sheriff and the other a farmer everyone just called 'Bean' after his favorite crop ( which was soybeans but calling him Soybean always seemed a bit much to his townfolks ). Before E.Z. could turn on her, Bean said hello.
"How are you today Bean?" Mrs.Poston asked.
"Oh, just fine, just fine. Mrs.Poston, have you seen my dog Willy anywhere lately?" he inquired.
She put a hand on his arm gently and said,"Now Bean, you know Willy's been dead for five years. You let
that dog go now you hear me?". Bean nodded and kind of looked at the ground then looked back at her. At which point she heard E.Z. interrupt.
"Have you ever thought of getting yourself a dog Mrs.Poston? You know, sort of a new partner in life, or crime as it were." and then laughed at his own joke outloud.
"No E.Z., but I have thought about getting a new neighbor occasionally." she said. The other old ladies grinned at each other a little while Bean stood there still thinking about Willy.
E.Z. would not be outdone. He was used to having the last word in any exchange. So he whipped out his handy-dandy old person neutralizer known as condescension.
"Oh now Mrs.Poston,"he intoned as if speaking to a child,"you wouldn't be speaking about Barbara and myself would you?" as he kept his game show host smile on.
"No E.Z. I wasn't talking about Barbara at all." she said as if speaking to a child. And then allowed a big, plastic smile to spread across her face. She could feel him bristle underneath the veneer of stiff politeness. He was at a complete loss for a reply and she knew it. She knew he just wasn't smart enough to quickly figure out what to do with her answer. She had a flashback of a small blonde boy in her frontyard so many years ago, red faced and stamping at the ground.
"You just wait till I tell my daddy about you two! Then you'll see what happens!" E.Z. had spit out at her and Mr.Poston. They had caught him in the act of deflating the tires on their car and Mr.Poston, who had been watering the yard at the side of the house, caught the boy by surprise and pointed his hose at little E.Z. and soaked him in water. He sprayed E.Z. with that hose even after the boy had jumped up and stumbled to the ground in his surprise, then got up again and started darting around. Mr.Poston stopped spraying him and said,"You knock that off boy you hear me? Don't you ever let me catch you in an act of maliciousness again around here. You'll turn out a bad man if you keep that nonsense up." And he waited for, hoped for an apology to come from the little boy, tears, anything. Anything besides E.Z.'s habitual defiance.
She and Mr.Poston had had quite a laugh about that soaked little boy swearing revenge at them. And when E.Z's father came around later to ask what had happened, and had been told, he apologized instead for his son. "I'm sorry Mr.Poston, and to you too of course Mrs.Poston. I'll make sure E.Z. understands plainly he done wrong." and he thanked them and apologized several times more before they had finally convinced him they were no longer upset about it and that E.Z. would be just fine.
"It's just, ever since his momma died....you know." and E.Z's fathers eyes would well as he squeezed the edges of the hat in his hand extra hard.
But E.Z.'s father was not here now to hold his son back nor apologize for him as the grown man searched rapidly inside his skull for some other insulting thing to say to Mrs.Poston. He looked at the other ladies, who by now could not hold back thier own grins, and he looked at the pastor who had known Mrs.Poston too long to try to fight her battles for her, and he looked at Bean who just blankly looked back at him. Then he found it. He found the thing to say and she smiled as she waited for him to say it.
"You know Mrs.Poston, another less friendly man might think you were trying to be purposefully insulting. But I know you're just too old and sweet for that." and his Cheshire grin reappeared once more.
She sighed.
"E.Z., that has got to be the weakest comeback to a clear insult I've ever heard from anyone. You've got it all wrong dear. A less freindly man would absolutely know I was being insulting and so would a more intelligent one. And you know I've never been so old and sweet as to hide my insults, and in particular where you are concerned E.Z. Gooch." and she let her words stand in the light of the mid-morning sun that fell on them all.
E.Z's face turned bright red. Bean, who had suddenly returned to reality during the last part of the discourse looked at E.Z. and said with absolutely no guile at all,"Mr.Gooch, I used to grow tomatos the same color your faced just turned." and the older ladies broke into hysterics, waved good-bye to Mrs.Poston and went off giggling to their cars. E.Z. turned to look at the Pastor Gilsmith for help of some kind, any kind, that would shield him but no help came. Mrs.Poston looked at Bean and said,"You haven't grown tomatos in a long time have you Bean?" and he said,"Naw, I just never liked 'em really. They're kind of a moody vegetable Mrs.Poston." and he paused and looked at E.Z., who was staring down hard at Mrs.Poston."Do you like tomatos Mr.Gooch?" to which E.Z. said with a bit too much emphasis,"I certainly do NOT!" and he stamped away to find his wife.
Pastor Gilfish looked at her and smiled. "I won't tell you that I think you were a bit tough on E.Z. Mrs.Poston nor will I tell you I think you are perfectly right. See you two next week then, oh, and Mrs.Poston, my wife and I are having a small party for her birthday next Saturday, would you like to come? You too of course Bean."
Bean said,"Yup. I'll be there." and he wandered off to his truck, not bothering to get any details from the pastor. Bean had been born and raised here, and he knew the details for a birthday party didn't matter so much as you showed up like you said you would.
"I will come to your party on one condition Pastor." she said coyly.
"And what condition is that Mrs.Poston?"
"You must play the Waltz." she said. To which he crooked his arm out to help her to his car for the drive to her house and said,"Only if I may have the first dance Mrs.Poston."
posted by .. @ 7:24 PM
