Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

“Who knows? ‘With proper care you can live another twenty years,’ ” she said, quoting his doctor.

“Proper care does not include after-dinner speeches in a monkey suit.”

“Yes, well.” And the coat, the coat …

“The tuxedo … will do for a shroud.”

… the coat: she would haunt the Writers and Artists Thrift Shop until the thing appeared. She’d buy it and stash it in the Finnish chest; maybe in that relic the Old World would find repose. And if not, let it writhe. Love, love … “A shroud? Up yours,” snorted Sonya, startling him, making him smile. “I intend to keep you around. Darling, let’s have dinner out.”

She took his arm and led him to a new Italian place on East Twelfth, one which the courtly old gentleman in the fur-collared coat had never had a chance to patronize.

KEITH AND MITSUKO MAGUIRE drifted into town like hoboes, though the rails they rode were only the trolley tracks from Boston, and they paid their fares like everyone else. But they seemed as easy as vagabonds, without even a suitcase between them, and only one hat, a canvas cap. They took turns putting it on. Each wore a hiker’s back frame fitted with a sleeping bag and a knapsack. Two lime green sneakers hung from Mitsuko’s pack.

That afternoon they were seen sharing a loaf and a couple of beers on a bench in Logowitz Park. Afterward they relaxed under a beech tree with their paperbacks. They looked as if they meant to camp there. But sleeping outside was as illegal twenty-five years ago as it is today; and these newcomers, it turned out, honored the law. In fact they spent their first night in the Godolphin Inn, like ordinary travelers. They spent their second night in the apartment they had just rented at the top of a three-decker on Lewis Street, around the corner from the house I have lived in since I was a girl.

And there they stayed for a quarter of a century, maintaining cordial relations with the downstairs landlord and with the succession of families who occupied the middle flat.

Every fall they planted tulips in front. In the spring, Keith mowed the side lawn. Summers they raised vegetables in the back; all three apartments shared the bounty.

Anyone else in their position would have bought a single-family house or a condo, maybe after the first child, certainly after the second. Keith, a welder, made good money; and Mitsuko, working part-time as a computer programmer, supplemented their income. But the Maguires kept on paying rent as if there were no such thing as equity. They owned no television, and their blender had only three speeds. But although the net curtains at their windows seemed a thing of the moment, like a bridal veil, their plain oak furniture had a responsible thickness. On hooks in the back hall hung the kids’ rain gear and Keith’s hard hat and Mitsuko’s sneakers. The sneakers’ green color darkened with wear; eventually she bought a pair of pink ones.

I taught all three of the boys. By the time the oldest entered sixth grade he was a passionate soccer player. The second, the bookish one, wore glasses. The third, a cutup, was undersized. In each son the mother’s Eastern eyes looked out of the father’s Celtic face; a simple, comely, repeated visage; a glyph meaning “child.”

Mitsuko herself was not much bigger than a child. By the time the youngest began high school even he had outstripped his mother. Her little face contained a soft beige mouth, a nose of no consequence, and those mild eyes. Her short hair was clipped every month by Keith. (In return Mitsuko trimmed Keith’s receding curls and rusty beard.) She wore T-shirts and jeans and sneakers except for public occasions; then she wore a plum-colored skirt and a white silk blouse. I think it was always the same skirt and blouse. The school doctor once referred to her as generic, but when I asked him to identify the genus he sighed his fat sigh. “Female parent? All I mean is that she’s stripped down.” I agreed. It was as if nature had given her only the essentials: flat little ears; binocular vision; teeth strong enough for buffalo steak, though they were required to deal with nothing more fibrous than apples and raw celery (Mitsuko’s cuisine was vegetarian). Her breasts swelled to the size of teacups when she was nursing, then receded. The school doctor’s breasts, sometimes visible under his summer shirt, were slightly bigger than Mitsuko’s.

The Maguires attended no church. They registered Independent. They belonged to no club. But every year they helped organize the spring block party and the fall park cleanup. Mitsuko made filligreed cookies for school bake sales and Keith served on the search committee when the principal retired. When their eldest was in my class, each gave a What I Do talk to the sixth grade. At my request they repeated it annually. Wearing a belt stuffed with tools, his mask in his hands, Keith spoke of welding’s origins in the forge. He mentioned weapons, tools, automobiles. He told us of the smartness of the wind, the sway of the scaffolding, the friendly heft of the torch. “An arc flames and then burns blue,” he said. “Steel bar fuses to steel bar.” Mitsuko in her appearances before the class also began with history. She described Babbage’s first calculating machine, whose innards nervously clacked. She recapitulated the invention of the Hollerith code (the punched card she showed the kids seemed as venerable as papyrus), the cathode tube, the microchip. Then she, too, turned personal. “My task is to achieve intimacy with the computer,” she said. “To follow the twists of its thought, to help it become all it can.” When leaving, she turned at the doorway and gave us the hint of a bow.

Many townspeople knew the Maguires. How could they not, with the boys going to school and making friends and playing sports? Their household had the usual needs — shots and checkups, medications, vegetables, hardware. The kids bought magazines and notebooks at Dunton’s Tobacco. Every November Keith and his sons walked smiling into Roberta’s Linens and bought a new Belgian handkerchief for Mitsuko’s birthday. During the following year’s special occasions, its lace would foam from the pocket of the white silk blouse.

But none of us knew them well. They didn’t become intimates of anyone. And when they vanished, they vanished in a wink. One day we heard that the youngest was leaving to become a doctor; the next day, or so it seemed, the parents had decamped.

I had seen Mitsuko the previous week. She was buying avocados at the greengrocer. She told me that she mixed them with cold milk and chocolate in the blender. “The drink is pale green, like a dragonfly,” she said. “Very refreshing.”

Yes, the youngest was off to medical school. The middle son was teaching carpentry in Oregon. The oldest, a journalist in Minnesota, was married and the father of twin girls.

So she had granddaughters. She was close to fifty, but she still could have passed for a teenager. You had to peer closely, under the pretext of examining pineapples together, to see a faint cross-hatching under the eyes. But there was no gray in the cropped hair, and the body in jeans and T-shirt was that of a stripling.

She chose a final avocado. “I am glad to have run into you,” she said with her usual courtesy. Even later I could not call this remark valedictory. The Maguires were always glad to run into any of us. They were probably glad to see our backs, too.

“You are a maiden lady,” the school doctor reminded me some months later. We have grown old together; he says what he pleases. “Marriage is a private mystery. I’m told that parents feel vacant when their children have flown.”

“Most couples just stay here and crumble together.”

“Who knows?” he said, and shrugged. “I’m a maiden lady myself.”