Story Hour: The Salad Maker Listens to the Piano

Part Three

The Durant Hotel, Flint, Michigan

Find Part One of my serialized work-in-progress story here. And Part Two, here. Remember, this is a draft. Much may change before all is said and done. Happy reading, and welcome to the journey. And be sure to leave any questions or comments!

****

The pianist sat at an upright piano at the far edge of an empty meeting room, his back to Edith. Edith stood inside the door she had just opened (slowly, stealthy as a hunting cat), one hand clasped over her opposite shoulder. She rubbed at it absently. She’d heat a water bottle before she went to bed tonight. 

The pianist played and played. Notes raced, twirled, and crept from the instrument, which Edith thought might never have done much more than provide the melody for Christmas carols before. She didn’t know if the man realized she was there. Something about how his shimmer had more silver in it than it had last night made her think that he might.

“Edith!” someone hissed.

Edith flinched. Naturally, Helly would have to catch her here, several floors above her usual station. But above Helly’s, too, come to think of it.

The other woman strode close. Today she wore an orange and lime striped dress that did not suit her complexion. “What are you doing?”

Edith turned and began walking back along the corridor in the direction she’d come without answering. She couldn’t. She could not adequately explain even to herself why she was wandering the upper halls of the hotel, stalking the pianist, listening to him play as if she was someone else entirely from who she actually was.

Helly fell into step beside her.  “Have you read about him?”

Edith glanced at her.   

“In the papers?  He’s better than Horowitz, supposedly, or could’ve been if he’d been managed differently. Or lived different. All kinds of depravity he’s got up to, they say. Drinking, women. And tantrums. Canceling shows if he felt a slight, refusing to play the pianos provided. Now he’s doing the whistle-stops. Here in Flint, then on to Lansing and Kalamazoo, then Grand Rapids. There’s some shindig in Chicago at the end of it, but it’s all nothing compared to where he started. Carnegie Hall.” 

Helly’s voice was reverent, and Edith glanced at her. She decided not to ask who Horowitz was. Instead, she said, “That in Chicago?”

Helly shook her head but didn’t say where. So, New York, maybe. Edith didn’t suppose it mattered. They arrived at the elevator, and Helly pushed the down arrow. When the elevator arrived, they stepped in, and she pushed the button that meant they would go to the first floor. Edith clutched the rail and felt her stomach rise as they moved. In all the years she had worked here, she had never ridden in the elevator. “He’s one of those weird cases,” Helly said, seeming unaware of Edith’s unease. “Ruled by his mother until she died, and after that, not a notion of how to look after himself. He can’t tie his shoes, is what the paper said. Like Einstein. Can you imagine?”

Edith didn’t see why Helly was surprised about the shoes. In raising her nine, she’d seen life was a simple math problem, one even she could untangle. The more you had of one thing, the less there’d be of some other. 

“They say he drinks a fifth of whiskey by noon every day.” Helly’s eyes gleamed; she seemed tickled by the piano player’s antics.

Again, Edith cut a sideways glance at her.  Normally Helly was all function, like a Hobart mixer. Function and a certain frostiness. Her friendliness now was as surprising as her gossiping and nearly as surprising as Edith’s own behavior. It pleased Edith in a way, but she didn’t think to show it. “My Dwight’ll be here waiting by now, I guess.”  She pushed open the first exit door they came to, abandoning Helly in the sconce-lit corridor. She left a swirl of cold air behind her, along with a wisp of auto exhaust off Second Street, which was busy at this hour.

***

Dwight waited for her half a block from the service entrance, his blue Rambler idling. When he caught sight of Edith, he leaned across the bench seat and cracked the passenger door open. Edith pulled it the rest of the way ajar and slid into the car. It was warm inside. No toys lay scattered on the floor, not that Dwight’s two didn’t have them. But Dwight had a tidy streak. It was like her own, which pleased Edith. What vexed her was that he never seemed to see the things they had in common.

“Work go all right today, Mother?” Dwight asked as they crossed the river. The hotel was less than three miles north of her house on Campbell Street, and in her head, Edith always supposed she could walk to work without much trouble. She often tracked the route she would take if the need came up someday, noting benches where she might rest and corner stores she could duck into if she felt uneasy about anything. She never had to make the trek. One or another of the children always brought her to and fro, finding time for her commute amidst their own busy routines of jobs and children and spouses. Despite all the hardships and lacks they had endured, all eight of her living children were devoted to her in this way, a devotion Edith didn’t know that she deserved but which she was grateful for.

“Mother?”

Edith glanced at Dwight. Unlike his brother, he frequently looked faintly irritated when he spoke to her, which always made her own irritation rise.

“How was work?”

“It was fine.”

Pursing his lips, Dwight nodded. Edith felt a prick of guilt. “Helly had me slicing celery all afternoon. Never saw so much of the stuff before in my life. Pound after pound of it. It’s for someone called Celery Victor, she said. I thought I'd never get through it.”

“Huh,” Dwight said, busy navigating a left-hand turn and not noticing the olive branch of words that Edith had held out. Edith subsided back into quiet, gazing out the window, considering her route.

Soon, Dwight snugged the car up along the curb in front of Edith’s house, and as ever, the sun burst out inside Edith. Hers was a house that even a very young child could draw: a small rectangle painted pale green with a cement block stoop. A straggly yew grew on either side of the step, and a brick chimney raised out of the center of the roof. Simple as it was, to her, this tiny house was a castle. She had saved and saved for it, living with each of her children in turn for years until she had the downpayment. And at last, miraculously, the money was put aside, the papers were drawn up, and her name was registered on the deed. She, Edith Gertrude Miller, was a landholder. Even years later, it barely seemed real.

Dwight opened his door in order to get out and open hers, but Edith caught his arm. “Keep your feet dry.” She patted his wrist once and swung her own feet to the pavement.

****

Inside, Edith pulled her galoshes off and hung her coat in the hall closet. She went straight to the kitchen, where she filled the kettle and spooned Sanka into a cup. While the water heated, she went to her bedroom and took off her work clothes, putting them in the hamper. She replaced them with a house coat and slippers and returned to the kitchen, where the kettle was steaming. 

She turned the radio on and listened to the news while she sipped her coffee. Apollo 9 had landed, oil from the blowout back in January was still washing up on California’s beaches, and James Earl Ray had admitted to killing Martin Luther King.  After the news was told and the weather forecast was given (cloudy and cold, no surprise in March in the middle of Michigan; it seemed hardly worth relating), Edith turned the dial, listening for the kind of music the pianist had played. She didn’t find any and soon switched the set off. 

The room seemed too quiet then, a thought she hadn’t had before. She rested her palms on her thighs and felt the soles of her feet on the linoleum floor. Eventually, she ran a hand over the tabletop, which was bright yellow Formica. She patted it. Then she rinsed her cup and put it in the drainer upside down and walked through the house, as she did every evening.   

She had just enough room for a couch and chair in the living room, as well as a coffee table with a bowl of silver-painted pine cones on it. In her bedroom, she had a matched white wooden bureau, bed frame, and dressing table. She kept a mint green spread on the bed, along with two throw pillows with crocheted covers she’d made in a craft class Vivian signed the two of them up for over the winter. Finger towels hung from a rail in the green and white tiled bathroom, and Edith straightened one that had slipped cockeyed before she left that room. 

When her tour was complete, she stood in the archway between the kitchen and living room, studying the room’s layout, caught by an idea, a question.

The question was this: How might she find space in the room for something?

Edith did not as yet know what that thing was, but whatever it was, it was new and unexpected. Something mysterious and surprising had put the want of itself into her head.

****