The Blonde

Emma Bates scraped a last mouthful of pea soup from her bowl, then hobbled to the window and yanked the ragged curtain aside. She didn’t bother to scrub her bowl or sponge the vinyl tablecloth. That could wait. Right now, it was time for the girl.

Across the street, the girl was already stopping by Mr. Eisenburg’s deli. She would emerge in five minutes (she always did) with a paper sack and walk the half block to a square of sooty brick and windows called Horla Apartments.

Five minutes later, the time it took to climb four flights of steps or ride a rickety elevator with stops on every floor, her shutters would fly open. She would be framed like a person in a moving camera by the window she pried open every evening, and she would grow more visible as the hot summer sun flared crimson and waned. When it was pitch dark, she would be perfectly illuminated by the apartment’s yellow square of light.

She had moved in sometime during the winter, and Mrs. Bates hoped her presence was a sign the neighborhood was improving.

Each spring and summer Emma Bates lived vicariously, seeing and hearing and sniffing the world that vibrated around 500 Gordon Terrace. When long-delayed warmth sent people streaming to the streets, she opened her window, letting life pour like cacophonous strains of music into her grim apartment.

She had witnessed muggings and break-ins; smelled the odors of frying food drifting from open windows to mingle with the odors of overturned garbage; watched fat, disheveled women water shriveled window plants, scold dirty children, and hang yellowed laundry from lines connecting apartments like arteries.

This summer, the girl was a bright butterfly scattering color along a drab landscape. She wore fashionable clothes and walked spryly, like the women who used to clatter past on stiletto heels before the neighborhood went down the drain. Her hair, fine as corn silk, floated past her shoulders.

In July, after two months of watching the girl move lithely through the dilapidated neighborhood, Mrs. Bates decided to invite her for tea.

“You expecting company, Mrs. Bates?” Mr. Eisenburg asked when Emma stacked almonds and chocolates next to his cash register. He knew she usually bought chicken and coleslaw; maybe some of his pumpernickel bread.

He was a friendly man with a head that reminded Emma of a boiled egg. In conversation, he cocked his head sideways and aimed one oversized but ineffectual ear toward his customers. He was hard of hearing.

“The little blonde girl. The one that moved up the street into Horla, though it’s beyond me why she ever moved to that place. The rent in mine’s just as low and at least it’s clean.” Mrs. Bates’ thin voice quivered toward Mr. Eisenburg’s cupped ear, but it was no use. A person had to stand and shout directly into the ear before coherent sound could filter beyond its flabby lobe.

Mr. Eisenburg tried again, leaning closer. “What’s that you say?”

“The blonde girl!”

He nodded, pretending to hear. Whoever it was, it was a good thing they were coming. He hadn’t known Mrs. Bates had friends or relatives in the world, but it was what she needed. His hearing might be bad, but his eyesight was sharp as a cat’s, and he thought Mrs. Bates looked poorly. Her face was the texture of tree bark, and her eyes were faded like blue jeans dipped in Clorox. But that was the way it was when you got old, he thought regretfully.

Clutching the brown paper sack, Mrs. Bates forced her arthritic joints back through the littered street. For once, she overlooked spilled garbage, paper cups scuttling before the humid breeze and jagged edges of broken glass. With the neighborhood on an upswing, these things would be replaced by window boxes of petunias, ladies in high heels and businesspeople drinking coffee at Hobbs on the corner.

At home, she arranged the nuts and candies in Tupperware bowls and pushed a damp rag across bed posts, dresser, and a Formica countertop marred by Owen’s cigarette burns. Then she dug out and dusted her photo album. The girl might want to glimpse her life, so thoroughly revealed in the yellowed pictures of a pretty blonde woman and various, changing friends.

Here was a picture of herself in front of the old Ragamuffin. Dalton Haines, who had liked to dance there as much as she did and had long since become a lawyer, stood smiling and handsome beside her.

“Why didn’t I marry him? He proposed enough times before he finally got fed up and ran off with Mildred Gupton. Now she lives on Michigan Avenue and I live here.” The thought left a taste like green persimmons in her mouth.

And here was one of Arthur Finch, an aggressive man with brains. He died ten years ago, a year before her own husband, leaving his widow rich from the fast food chain he started. Emma had read about it on the second page of the Sun Times. She shoved the picture to the bottom of the pile, out of sight.

There were several pictures of her late husband Owen, a nondescript man; handsome enough until alcohol softened his stomach and failure blurred his features.

Here was her favorite; the picture of herself that she had been looking for. It captured luminous eyes and satiny cheeks ringed by pale hair; a picture preserving beauty in timelessness reserved for photographs.

“This is the one that looks like the girl. I could be her grandmother.” The idea was startling every time she thought it; every time she saw the girl.

There were no pictures of herself over forty, when Owen pawned their camera. Mrs. Bates couldn’t remember getting old. It was almost as if she had woken one morning with someone else’s skin draped over her body. Age was a terrible trick. The inner self stayed young while the outer self drooped and sagged and dwindled.

If Emma had it to do over, she wouldn’t have ended up here; a woman deteriorating with the neighborhood, condemned to live the remainder of her life viewing the world from her grimy window. She would have taken one of those other roads; the decisions that crop up daily without you realizing that each choice boxes you in a little more.

Emma Bates wanted to say to the girl, “You have life at your feet. Don’t squander it. Be wise in your choices. Time is shorter than you think.”

Her plan was to intercept the girl between Mr. Eisenburg’s and Horla Apartments the following day, but she woke to a hard, slanting rain beating like kettledrums against the window. Not this morning. It had to be a day when the late afternoon sun danced through the window, brightening the dim apartment.

The rain continued for a week, and Mrs. Bates’ arthritis flared, sending her to bed. Then on Monday, sun splintered through the ragged curtain. She got up feeling washed clean, like the world, and decided this was the day.

The hours until six stretched taut as violin strings. Mrs. Bates riffled through old magazines, dozed, filled the pitcher with fresh tea and dozed again. At 5:45 she opened the curtain. The sun’s hard glare blinded her, and she cupped her hands over her eyes to stare at the rain-washed street in the direction of Mr. Eisenburg’s.

A group of boys lolled in front of the deli, ready for mischief until a policeman rounded the corner and sent them off like a flock of startled pigeons. Some younger children played kick the can, and Mrs. Bates heard the can's hollow clink each time it clattered down the street.

At six, the girl appeared. She was dressed in yellow, the color of her hair, and she looked like a bright canary weaving through a world of drab sparrows.

Mrs. Bates’ heart fluttered moth-like against her chest as she pulled away from the window.

The air outside was thick and steamy, hard to breathe. She had to take extra gulps through her mouth. Perspiration beaded like dewdrops on her face and she dabbed it with a handkerchief.

The girl stepped out of Mr. Eisenburg’s, and Mrs. Bates struggled through the humid evening to meet her. The sun was slanting into her eyes, making it hard to see.

When she lurched forward, she thought she had tripped. A pain like shards of glass jabbed her chest. The sun was inside her now, filling her with its white-hot glare. She hit the sidewalk with a ponderous thud.

The brassy-haired, thick-waisted girl in yellow was the first one in the circle of people hedging the woman.

“What happened!” somebody shouted.

“Some old woman,” said the girl. “She must of dropped dead in the street. I seen her comin’ from way over there at Mr. Eisenburg’s. Looked like she was makin’ a beeline right at me, then she just starts grabbin’ her chest and falls.”

The boys who had been playing kick the can squirmed through the crowd so they could see up close, this new excitement taking precedence over their game.

The siren’s scream announced the ambulance before it flashed into sight. Two men jumped out, felt the woman’s pulse, and a minute later were drawing a sheet across her face.

“I could have told you she was dead. I took one look and seen she was gray as fish scales. I said ‘ain’t no use tryin’ to help that one.’” The girl spoke to no one in particular, but to everyone within hearing range.