8 Nov 2009
Things Said on a Saturday
In the late afternoon, on her way home from the laundromat with a 17-pound bag of clean materials balanced atop her shoulder and against the left side of her neck, Molly spoke to another person for the first time that day. It was Saturday and the person was a boy of perhaps 10, who veered into her immediate path skirting a playful jab from another boy to her right. Their roughhousing forced her to perform a rapid reconnoiter of the sidewalk, a feat made precarious by the ungainly bag of laundry skewing her balance. What Molly said was, “Watch it, kid.”
Prior to that, Molly had participated in two nonverbal exchanges this Saturday. First, in the morning as she purchased a carton of apple juice at the deli, she acknowledged the return of proper change with a nod to the man behind the counter. He knew her, inasmuch as he was aware that she frequented his deli on a near-daily basis, but they had never addressed a word to each other, and her nod went unreturned. The second interaction was an hour later, with a man on the street who expressed his appreciation for her physical appearance by giving her a lengthy once-over and muttering, “Beautiful, beautiful,” as they passed on the sidewalk. Molly had responded with a noise in her throat, intended to communicate disgust for this man and his actions.
When Molly got home, she deposited the bag of laundry onto her unmade bed and looked around for an excuse not to put it away immediately. She went into the living room, turned on the light in the fishtank, and made fish faces at the tank’s sole occupant. There had been two fish until recently. Buddy – smaller, gold-and-black, and though she tried not to think in those terms, Molly’s favorite – had slowly died over the course of the last week from a swim bladder infection that caused him to float inevitably upside-down, despite his fervent efforts to remain upright. The remaining fish, Princess – larger, orange-and-white, and somehow devoid of the personality Molly had seen in Buddy – seemed healthy enough, but now Molly felt mild apprehension whenever she approached the tank. Molly had often talked to Buddy, but she’d only spoken once to Princess, two days ago. She had said, “Stop it!” when she’d found Princess nibbling at Buddy’s dead body. She had shouted it. She said nothing to Princess today.
Molly went into her office to check her e-mail. While she did this, she had a conversation via Instant Messenger with her mother, during which she communicated her decision to accept a counter-offer from her current place of employment rather than taking a job at a new agency that had been courting her. Her mother volunteered advice on the subject, which Molly ostensibly considered but privately discounted as coming from a limited viewpoint, as her mother had worked as the bookkeeper for her father’s business for the last 30 years and never been courted by an agency of any kind. She also conveyed the occurrence, but not the details, of a first date over drinks with an actor named Michael, which had taken place four days prior. At the end of the date, the actor had asked to see her this weekend. Molly had said, “That sounds nice.” She had meant it. She was reluctant to view his pursuit of a second date as a romantic success, but passed the information on to her mother to act as a preemptive strike against any inquiries as to the status of her “love life.” It was a status that Molly had trouble evaluating on her own, let alone to others, particularly her mother. At the conclusion of their silent conversation, Molly replied to her mother’s farewell declaration of love by pressing the ‘X’ and ‘O’ keys several times in succession, and signed out of Instant Messenger.
She returned to her bedroom, where she put away the laundry, setting aside clean sheets and several pieces of the outfit she intended to wear when she went out with Michael the actor that night. From the small, gilded shopping bag set on the vanity, she produced three new pairs of underwear, purchased at a lingerie store three days ago. At the time of her purchase, the woman who rang her up had said, “For someone special?” and though Molly had declined to reply, the way she blushed made her fully aware that she liked Michael the actor. Now she selected the one that was light pink with black ribbon highlights, and removed the tags before placing it with the rest of the date outfit, laid out on a tiny pink chair that was uncomfortable for sitting, but an aesthetically pleasing place to lay clothing out, or discard it upon removal. Then Molly put fresh sheets on the bed. She did this without consciously recognizing that she planned to sleep with Michael the actor at the end of their date tonight. Yesterday she’d said to a friend that she had, “A feeling about this one.”
The plan was for Michael the actor to call her around five in the evening. When Molly hadn’t heard from him by six, she began to feel anxious. Her date outfit was donned, and she had been sitting on the edge of her neatly-made bed, using the vanity mirror to make minute adjustments to her hair and make-up. Now regarding her own appearance, ready for a date who was not calling, made her feel sad and foolish. Molly stood abruptly, and moved to sit in the armchair in the living room. She left the phone on the table, to create distance that would prevent her from answering too quickly, and watched Princess circle the perimeter of the fishtank. She smoothed her skirt over her legs and tried to sit as straight and still as she possibly could.
At seven-thirty the phone rang. She had felt it was bad luck to add Michael the actor to her Caller Identification so soon, but she recognized it was him by the number. She answered on the third ring, and in a way that she intended to betray neither hope nor irritation, said “Hello.” “Hello, Molly,” said Michael the actor. “Hello,” she repeated, implying that she did not know the identity of the caller because he was not yet included in her Caller Identification. “This is Michael,” the caller said. “Hello, Michael,” said Molly, a little unevenly because a feeling in her stomach told her what was coming next. “I meant to call sooner,” said Michael, and Molly didn’t know how to respond to that, so she simply said, “Oh.” It must have sounded skeptical to Michael because he said, “No, I really mean that – I did mean to call earlier. I know I said I’d call, and I meant it. I had a really nice time with you when we were out together. I mean, a really nice time.” He sounded sincere, but not in a way that made the feeling in Molly’s stomach improve. She sat back down in the armchair, and smoothed her skirt over her legs again. He seemed to be waiting for her to respond, so she said, “Thanks. I did too,” and she meant it, but not the way she had meant it when she had said it would be nice to go out with him tonight. Michael said, “I didn’t call when I said I would because, the thing is, and I mean – I did have a really great time with you – there’s this old girlfriend of mine who has sort of come back into the picture, and we have a lot of history, you know how it is.” Here he paused to allow Molly to say that she did know how it was, and she did know – she had known for perhaps a quarter of an hour before she picked up the phone - but she didn’t say so. She didn’t say anything, so Michael continued, “And I knew it would be, I mean – God, awkward, just like this – but I wanted to call because I really did like you, and I didn’t want to not-call. So I guess that’s what I called to say, that I’m not going to call.” He laughed in way that expressed how much he regretted calling.
When it was clear that he wasn’t going to say anything else, Molly said, “Well, that was very responsible of you, Michael. Is there anything else you’d like to let me know?” She tried to say it without intimating her feeling that the biggest problem with actors was their need for useless dramatics. Without intimating any of her feelings, she tried to say it as neutrally as possible, but a note of sarcasm or injury must have crept into her tone because Michael drew a deep breath as though to explain some more, and Molly, not wishing to hear the words, “like you”, “good time”, “you know”, or “I mean” again, quickly said, “Take care, Michael,” and hung up the call without waiting for his reply. Molly sat very still in the armchair, her feet planted delicately but deliberately on the floor. She looked at the fishtank and said to Princess, “Why does this always happen?”
Princess, if she could have spoken, would have said that she didn’t know why, but that for several days she had felt something was wrong. That despite her efforts to maintain her position in the water, she was constantly and inextricably drawn upside-down towards the surface.
