Melissa was jealous. That the rush of feeling she suffered was plainly ridiculous didn’t diminish its power. She seemed, unknowingly, to have convinced herself of the fact that Emile worshiped her, and the possibility that he worshiped them all, that she might be at the bottom of his list of attractions, was a shock. It was all absurd, and it was all true. She seemed to have rearranged all of her values around his image; to have come unthinkingly to depend upon his admiration. The fact that she cared at all about his philandering was painfully humiliating, but it remained painful.
She left New York in the middle of the afternoon and called Narobi’s when she got back. She ordered a loaf of bread, garlic salt, endives—nothing she needed. He was there fifteen or twenty minutes later.
“Emile?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you ever write a letter to Mrs. Bender?”
“Mrs. who?”
“Mrs. Bender.”
“I haven’t written a letter since last Christmas. My uncle sent me ten dollars and I wrote a letter and thanked him.”
“Emile, you must know who Mrs. Bender is.”
“No, I don’t. She probably buys her groceries somewhere else.”
“Are you telling the truth, Emile?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, I’m making such a damn fool of myself,” she said, and began to cry.
“Don’t be sad,” he said. “Please don’t! I like you very much, I think you’re fascinating, but I wouldn’t want to make you sad.”
“Emile, I’m going to Nantucket on Saturday, to close up the house there. Would you like to come with me?”
“Oh, gee, Mrs. Wapshot,” he said. “I couldn’t do that. I mean I don’t know.” He knocked over a chair on his way out.
Melissa had never seen Mrs. Cranmer. She could not imagine what the woman looked like. She then got into the car and drove to the florist shop on Green Street. There was a bell attached to the door and, inside, the smell of flowers. Mrs. Cranmer came out of the back, taking a pencil from her bleached hair and smiling like a child.
Emile’s mother was one of those widows who keep themselves in a continuous state of readiness for some call, some invitation, some meeting that will never take place because the lover is dead. You find them answering the telephone in the back-street cab stands of little towns, their hair freshly bleached, their nails painted, their high-arched shoes ready for dancing with someone who cannot come. They sell nightgowns, flowers, stationery and candy, and the lowest in their ranks sell movie tickets. They are always in a state of readiness, they have all known the love of a good man, and it is in his memory that they struggle through the snow and the mud in high heels. Mrs. Cranmer’s face was painted brightly, her dress was silk, and there were bows on her high-heeled pumps. She was a small, plump woman, with her waist cinctured in sternly, like a cushion with a noose around it. She looked like a figure that had stepped from a comic book, although there was nothing comic about her.
Melissa ordered some roses, and Mrs. Cranmer passed the order on to someone in the back and said, “They’ll be ready in a minute.” The doorbell rang and another customer came in—a thick-featured man with a white plastic button in his right ear that was connected by an electrical cord to his vest. He spoke heavily. “I want something for a deceased,” he said. Mrs. Cranmer was diplomatic, and through a series of delicate indirections tried to discover his relationship to the corpse. Would he like a blanket of flowers, at perhaps forty dollars, or something a little less expensive? He gave his information readily, but only in reply to direct questions. The corpse was his sister. Her children were scattered. “I guess I’m the closest she has left,” he said confusedly, and Melissa, waiting for her roses, felt a premonition of death. She must die—she must be the subject of some such discussion in a flower shop, and close her eyes forever on a world that distracted her with its beauty. The image, hackneyed and poignant, that came to her was of life as a diversion, a festival from which she was summoned by the secret police of extinction, when the dancing and the music were at their best. I do not want to leave, she thought. I do not ever want to leave. Mrs. Cranmer gave her the roses, and she went home.
