Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

“Why’s that, Ma?”

“They don’t make coupons for this stuff.”

On the way back Ellen was insistent about paying for both their bus fares. It was her treat, she said, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“You know, Ma,” Ellen said when they were putting away what Mrs. Bliss couldn’t quite bring herself to think of as groceries, “there’s really no point in you going out in this heat.”

“No? What should I do, ask the neighbors to do my shopping?”

“You could call up and have it delivered. I’m sure in a community where over half the people are retired the stores offer all kinds of services.”

“Sure,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss, “and you know what they’d charge? An arm and a leg.”

“What are you saving it for, Ma? Your golden years?”

This was some Ellen, this Ellen. Daughter-in-law or no daughter-in-law, and mother of her grandchildren (one of whom, Janet, off in India watching the tigers churn themselves into butter, she hadn’t seen in years) or no mother of her grandchildren, she was a perfect bully of a woman. She had an answer and a remark for everything. No wonder she’d done so well for herself in retail shoes. Which brought up a small point Mrs. Bliss had wanted to ask about for years but the woman made her so angry, she always forgot. Now, while the iron was hot, she decided to strike.

“Your chiropractor?”

“What about him?”

“Isn’t he a special sort of chiropractor?”

“Holistic,” Ellen said.

“Yes, holistic,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss, “that’s right.”

“What about him?” Ellen said still more defensively.

“I forget, ain’t that where the mind and the body are the same thing?”

“He treats the whole person. What about it?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering why you always wear earth shoes.”

“They’re not earth shoes, Ma. They’re customized. You can’t get them without a prescription.”

“They’re flat like earth shoes.”

“They’re not earth shoes.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss. “How come I never see you in high heels? Not at the biggest affairs.”

“High heels are very bad for you. They ruin your posture; they can throw out your back.”

“Aha!” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

“What are you talking about?”

“You sell high heels! You make practically your whole living selling high heels! And all those prizes and trips? You can’t tell me those are from carpet slippers. I see what they get for high heels. The markup’s all in high heels. Ask yourself, Ellen, how many people’s backs have you thrown out in your time?”

“Caveat emptor,” Ellen said primly.

It was an absurd conversation and Mrs. Bliss knew it. Nor did she feel particularly proud of having bested her daughter-in-law. It was no way to treat a guest, let alone a close relative. Plus Ellen was one of the gang. It was no way to treat one of the gang, and Mrs. Bliss’s triumph fell hollow in her heart. Yet hadn’t she been asking for it since the moment she came into her house? And what about the tsimmes with the groceries? Or paying her mother-in-law’s bus fare like she was the last of the big-time spenders? Or that what-are-you-saving-it-for crack? When she must have known one of the things she was saving it for was Ellen’s children — the scarce Janet and garageless Barry.

Still, none of that was an excuse. The woman got on her nerves? Big deal. Grin and bear it.

Mrs. Bliss tried to make it up to her but Ellen hung back coolly, parrying Mrs. Bliss’s attempts to make up with all the quiet, dignified propriety and hurt she could muster. The only way Mrs. Bliss could think to make it up to her was through the dreadful, suspect teas and jams Ellen had brought down from Chicago. She asked Ellen to prepare it and, oh yes, it might be a good idea to heat up one of those nice rice pies Ellen had picked up at the market this morning.

She had to know what Mrs. Bliss was up to, but Ellen was a good sport, so what the hell, forgive and forget. She prepared the tea for her mother-in-law, steeped the herbs briefly, a lick and a promise, really, cut her a small piece of pie.

And then, over their queer high tea, both women dropped their guards, participants in an undeclared spiritual truce and, very gently, started to become friends.

“I barged in on you, didn’t I?” Ellen said.

“Barged in? What? No. Don’t be silly.”

“Intruded on your privacy.”

“Oh, my privacy,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

“Some people enjoy being alone.”

“Who? Why?”

“They catch up on their reading, they can go to the movies in the afternoon without feeling guilty, or watch TV till it comes out of their ears. You love playing cards. In a place like this I bet you play all the card games there are, in a place like this. You must like that aspect at least.”

“Oh, cards,” Mrs. Bliss said.

“Oh, privacy? Oh, cards?”

“I’m eighty-two years old.”

“You act younger.”

Mrs. Bliss shrugged.

“The most important thing,” Ellen said ruminantly, seriously, deeply, originally, a message from the sibyl, “is to have your health.”

Meaning Marvin was dead, Janet incommunicado, Barry failing, Ellen on some mystical quest in Houston, Texas, that would not only resolve her pinched nerves, headaches, and swollen ankles but perhaps restore them, too, all of them, to what they were and whom they were and where they were decades earlier, reincarnating them not so much into different or even higher beings as back into their own old, individual, mean, quotidian averages. Meaning I beg your pardon Ma, but how dare you be bored at your age while you still have health, privacy, books, movies, TV coming out of your ears, and access to all the card games there are?

But meaning, Mrs. Bliss supposed, chief above even all those other things, while you still have most of your family intact, if not on call then at least available at a moment’s notice — Frank and May, Maxine and George, her grandchildren Judith and James, Donny, even herself and Janet, herself and Barry. And meaning, too, never mind her spirited new Hispanic and Latino friends but the ones in jail, and the ones who’d skipped, and all that crime and excitement unfolding before her very eyes. (People talked, insinuated, implied.) Manny from the building a dear friend, a great loss; Tommy Auveristas, the one that got away; the Kingpin Camerando; Long-timer Chitral; the unresolved mystery of the Buick LeSabre. And Ellen was right. How dare she be bored?

But maybe something of disapproval, too, in that long list of overlooked opportunities, perhaps actually accusatory. Not, “You could have gone into retail sales, Ma,” although they both knew she’d have been too old even if she’d applied on the day she’d been widowed, but something, anything, something, even if it were only to volunteer to distribute newspapers and magazines from a cart she pushed three days a week along the corridors and into the rooms of patients in hospitals.

“Down here,” Ellen said, “don’t you at least miss the gang?”

“I miss the old gang.”

“The old gang.”

“The gang that got away. The gang that died.”

“Oh, Ma,” Ellen said.

“It ain’t all bad,” Mrs. Bliss said. “I got outside interests.”

“That’s good, Ma. That’s swell.”

Mrs. Bliss grinned.

“What?”

She smiled broadly, almost laughed.

“Ma?” Ellen said. “Ma?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ellen!”

“Tell me,” Ellen said, “I won’t breathe a word.”

Mrs. Bliss shook her head.

“Come on, Ma, tell me.”

“All right,” she said, “but if this ever gets out…”