by Duke Stewart
Harriet Bass arrives late for the afternoon matinee. The other patrons in the ticket line stare at her, commiserating on her recent divorce. She would love to scratch those bleeding eyes out. She enters the bathroom which has a vanity mirror encircled by translucent bulbs. She never looks in the mirror. Much too bright, it highlights every imperfection; her crinkled nose, the hollows under her eyes, the slight pits on her cheeks from teenage acne. She finds a stall and waits until she hears sound coming from the auditorium. She exits the bathroom and goes to the confection kiosk and orders a Coke. She finds a seat in the rear of the theater. Her seat leans back, readying to launch her onto the sticky floor. The overhead lights shine onto berry-red crinoline curtains.
Harriet and her husband, Tom, would attend a movie a week. In a small town like Cranston, after football season the town offered few entertainments: the northside night clubs played country western, the southside, rap. She cared for neither. Buffets remained popular despite the new obesity drugs, where the tinkle of glasses and the din of raucous conversations made intimacy impossible. She dreams of a steakhouse with candlelit booths, but in a 300 person town with a throttled economy, few risk it.
She’s at the movies because of Susan.
“You should keep going whether you are alone or not,” Susan said.
Susan Ginger, so fearless and forthright. Susan reared autistic twins. After the twins were born, her husband left her for a high school senior. Everyone figured that Susan’s husband would have the decency to move to another town, but he stayed. “The thing that really irked me,” Susan said, “Was that Bill wanted me to file for divorce. He wasn’t man enough to do it.”
Harriet didn’t have that problem. Tom filed for their divorce. Tom worked as an engineer at a woolen mill. When word came that a Dutch conglomerate had purchased the company, Tom, who with foresight had already circulated his resume, resigned. The plan was for Harriet to move to Atlanta when they sold the house but instead he divorced her.
Tom gave no indication their marriage was in trouble. He showered her with gifts: a surprise vacation to Cancun, a Lexus with a red bow on the roof, diamonds galore. The end came on Christmas Day. She had bought him a Rolex. Tom snapped on the gilded watchband and said, ”you shouldn’t have.” He meant it. They fought. Both of them were drunk. A silly argument. He wanted to move his guns to Atlanta. She didn’t know much about firearms, but knew their importance to her husband. “I don’t understand why you always work weekends. And you never answer my messages. How do you think I feel when you don’t answer?” she asked. Instead, he asked for a trial separation. “Do anything you like,” she said.
He left the next day. She called her agent and took the house off the market. She decided to fight him for half his pension, and the house. When he called, livid, his anger excited her. Her husband wasn’t a zombie after all.
As Doris Kelly enters the theater, Harriet slides low and hunches her shoulders, hiding in her seat. The lights boil down like a prison guard’s spotlight. Doris, a pharmacy tech, has access to most of Cranston’s prescriptions. She can be the life of the party. “Karen Stills has herpes. Chuck Thomas got a vasectomy.” Harriet wonders how she’s avoided getting sued or fired.
Doris wears a coat with padded shoulders. Her body has the look of a T: level from shoulder to shoulder then straight down from head to toe. Doris reminds her of the kids and parents she suffered through at cotillion. The formal etiquette. Her stilted speech, where contractions feel like a crime. Harriet hated cotillion. The dresses made her itch and then during the waltz, the boys kept trying to cop a feel. The chaperone was worthless. “Boys will be boys.”
Harriet wonders what’s taking the projectionist so long. She thinks that the manager is waiting for more patrons. Mr. Gross is parsimonious. He sets the thermostat low in winter, high in summer.
“Is that you, Harriet?” Doris asks, looking over her shoulder.
“Hello, Doris.” Doris sports a shiny wedding ring with one of the biggest diamonds in Cranston.
“May I sit with you?”
Doris slides in beside her. Because she has a coke in one hand and popcorn in the other she has to wiggle her hips to enter the seat.
“I tried to get Bob to come, but you know how some men are fanatic about golf,” Doris says.
“I thought it would be a good way to kill an afternoon,” Harriet replies.
“You shouldn’t have to go to a movie by yourself. You could have called me.” Harriet can’t think of a worse way to spend an afternoon.
“I don’t mind being alone.”
Harriet’s been reading psychology. Harriet has decided that she’s an introvert. Introverts are timid, and enjoy activities like cross-stitching, chess, reading, bicycle riding, and attending movies alone.
Extroverts, the majority in Cranston, don’t understand introverts. For example, last week Harriet ate at a deli. She carried a book with her to read. As she sat waiting for her lunch, a waitress approached and asked if she would mind sharing a table. Harriet lowered her book, crimping a corner to mark her place.
She looked around the restaurant. “There are half a dozen tables that are empty,” she said.
“I know, but there’s this woman sitting in the corner by herself. I thought maybe…”
“Did you ask her if she wanted company?”
“I just thought … Excuse me, I didn’t mean to bother you.” She brought Harriet a bowl of cold clam chowder, a Swiss cheese sandwich with charring on the bread. Harriet tipped the passive aggressive waitress a dollar.
*
After the divorce, Barbara Simmons, her next-door neighbor, invited her to Liberty Baptist. To be neighborly she accepted the invitation but the padded pews, the too-jolly deacon who greeted her at the door, the dowagers with their scented handkerchiefs and black-leather pocketbooks, the preacher’s austere, unsettling frown, unnerved her. A bald-headed usher pinned a large red ribbon on her chest which specified, “Visitor.” Within minutes, middle-aged ladies accosted her. Barbara didn’t help either. “She’s my next door neighbor. She just got divorced.”
During the invitation, Barbara nudged her with an elbow. Harriet pushed her hips down. She heard the other church members mumbling, praying for her soul–by name. She kept her eyes lowered. She didn’t want to give the preacher more incentive. When she walked out of the church, she knew how a convict felt after serving her sentence.
Tuesday night she heard a knock on her door. She pulled back a window curtain: Pastor Williamson and four of his flock. Barbara wasn’t with them. They had Bibles in hand, voluminous leather with writing for the hard of seeing. She retreated to the kitchen. They rang the doorbell. After a few minutes, she heard their car doors slam. The next day when Barbara asked if she had met the Visiting Committee, Harriet said she thought she’d heard someone knocking while she was in the shower. “That’s all-right, they’ll be back,” Barbara replied.
*
Since her divorce, Harriet rarely laughs. She reads one self-help book after another, seeking a cure for her loneliness. The books repeat the same theme: you control your life. Bored by the movie, she wants to leave but fears Doris might follow. She could excuse herself for the bathroom and not return, but that would be a dirty trick. She suffers through the reprise, the denouement, the climax; the protagonists, having fought, make-up. They hug like Russians. All’s well that ends well. She thinks that a self-help author could have written the screenplay. At times the whole world seems conspiratorial. Manifest it and it will come. Fake it until you make it. Reminds her of her orgasms with Tom.
As the credits roll across the screen, the patrons leave. In the parking lot Doris asks, “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“No thanks, Doris.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“You know, what happened with you and Tom, I never would have thought.” Harriet has heard this line so many times: from neighbors, from her mother and sisters.
“I never had an orgasm with him,” she says.
“Pardon?”
“He was dull. He was too staid, no foreplay, too much like cotillion.”
Doris runs towards her car. Today will be the last time Doris sits with her.
In the driver’s seat, Harriet turns on the radio. She listens to the Reggae beat, the Caribbean flavor, the euphony of the insouciant, classic a capella song. “Be Happy.” She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But then, she accepts the moment for what it is, and drives down the highway singing the tune to herself.
Duke Stewart has published or has work forthcoming in many magazines including Cimarron Review, Puerto Del Sol, Passages North, Shenandoah, Permafrost, The Penmen Review and Bellevue Literary Review. Honors include an award from the Kansas Arts Council for Best Story–Fiction, a grant through the Georgia Council for the Arts for literature, and a recent Pushcart nomination from Jet Fuel.
January House Literary Journal 
Leave a comment