Old Miss Gracing by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 15
Morrigan and Zeke were always together the next years and through high school, though she didn’t follow up on her stated early interest in learning baseball. Zeke got to display his physical acumen on the diamond and to a lesser extent on the basketball court. Morrigan had more of a penchant for joining clubs, none of which had any interest in sports. She regularly attended meetings of the high school book club, glee club and birdwatchers’ society.
It gave them an advantage. Neither really understood what the other was saying, so arguments became scarcities. They both enjoyed movies and saw more than their share of Alfred Hitchcock. He read Hitchcock’s magazine, too, but that seemed not to catch her interest, being too simple. Most of all they cared about music, books and each other.
They continued to see Miss Gracing at her apartment and at the river, sometimes together, sometimes apart. The Beatles landed in America in 1964 and after that the conversations centered around the ideas in the new music, the rapidly changing and improving world, what the wonderful future would be like and of course the sexual revolution. Zeke and Morrigan were now doing almost all of the talking and Miss Gracing liked hearing
their stories and never told them that many similar things were going on during the Roaring Twenties, when she was young.
At work Miss Gracing met a few particularly interesting new students and her dream repertoire took a general turn for the pleasant. She visualized her early years in Boston, when everything seemed to be going her way with no end in sight. She remembered many days with Hector in Albuquerque, even some that probably never happened. Once in a while she would get a shock when she dreamed of something, someone, or a presence rattling around in her hallway. In different episodes she saw the ominous thing as an angry ghost, a devil, a professional man with a gun, or a crazed old man with bulging eyes, messy sparse white hair and a determined look on his contorted face. She always woke up in a sweat to find that Simon had left her bed and was rattling around in something.
She was happy for the young lovers she had known for over a decade. She wished she could be more a part of it. She was never told that Zeke’s ideal version of a woman was a young Miss Gracing and that Morrigan’s ideal man was a young male version of her, as neither could articulate that.
1972 was an eventful year for everyone. Zeke was still in college, taking the minimum number of courses to avoid the draft. He had no particular major and took all kinds of courses in philosophy, theology, business, math and anything else that
fit into his schedule. Zeke and Morrigan married and mostly at her insistence headed for New Mexico. They liked the climate, prices, diversity of cultures and what some called the spirituality of the place. Hippy communes were interesting experiments to them, but both had the observation that a few did all the work or supplied all the money, while the majority was content to grace the rest with their idle presence. The fact that it was not within driving distance from any parent was an added attraction. They expected to and did meet many other young people like themselves, with no big interest in anything except doing what they felt like, their “manana” and “siesta”
customs proved seductive and intoxicating. She taught grammar school six hours a day, nine months of the year and he tried a number of things and succeeded at none. Forays into roofing, banking, landscaping and carpentry all proved to be disasters, one way or another. He started writing stories. Most were for magazines, didn’t pay much, but at least provided something while he worked on his novels that he knew would eventually be movies. They made at least monthly phone calls to their matchmaker, mostly telling her of the marvels in their new environment. Miss Gracing bit her tongue when she heard something that didn’t sound right to her primarily, because she didn’t want to sound too knowledgeable of the place, but also
considered that it had been quite a while since she was there and the world was rapidly changing.
Miss Gracing retired at 72, after insisting on hanging around past the normal 65. She was still in good health, Simon wasn’t around anymore and she really didn’t want to hang around the house all day remembering things. But, the kids were different, perhaps less polite and she became more and more aware that she was referred to as “Old Miss Gracing,” even among the teachers. She wasn’t the least bit comfortable with being constantly reminded that she was the oldest soul in the house and that probably was the biggest factor in the decision. She thought; “It’s horrible when they look at you like you’re going to keel over at any moment.” She decided that she would spend her days volunteering her time to work with homeless dogs and cats. The “work” was more akin to keeping each other company.
Castor Courtney of Corpusbury had the high point of his adult existence. His correspondence had succeeded in determining that “Eloise Gracing” had been employed by a certain Albuquerque school district for a short time in 1925, three years after the real Eloise Gracing died. He was sure that he was on the right path. He took a trip to see if he could find any other information and was unsuccessful at that, but got to see a part of the country that looked more like Greece or the
southern part of France, than anything he’d yet gleaned on his trips to the cemetery and post office. All he had to do is get more letters out to the rest of the country’s school districts and find out where Eloise Gracing shows up next. He thought;
“Maybe this won’t be a wasted life, after all.”
1973, 1974 and 1975 went by with no huge surprises.
Morrigan still had her teaching job, but was thinking more and more about how much fun it would be to have her own little girl to take care of. Zeke saw that the magazine writing he was doing wasn’t enough to support one person, never mind two or three, so he increasingly focused on the novels as the only possible solution, feeling guilty as a consequence. Morrigan wasn’t pushing him in any direction. She just seemed to be continuing her philosophy of doing as you please and that the good universe would provide. Zeke had his reservations and didn’t know that his gnawing compulsion to take better care of his family paralleled that of Hector, who he had no knowledge of, first or second hand.
Miss Gracing made many new dog and cat friends, but chose not to bring any home, perhaps not wanting to risk leaving them behind, with no one to take care of them. She found that she slept less now, leaving more time for music, memories and dreams of all varieties. She missed the visits from her favorite
pupils, not having found any new ones the last few working years and the others, were now young adults with millions of things to do.
1976 was a watershed year. Morrigan announced that she was pregnant and Zeke had not yet sold a novel. They did have a few bucks laying around, however, due to an out of court settlement reached with the police department, over the psychological and physical damage incurred, when, without a warrant, the cops kicked in the door of their three room adobe casita, weapons drawn, looking for marijuana and not finding it in the airtight glass under one of the floor bricks.
Zeke became interested in old magazines. He’d purchase old issues of Mad Magazine, Life Magazine, Look Magazine and
“Boston.” He seemed to have an interest in what went on in antiquity, not history as it is taught, but how the people really lived. He was particularly drawn to the 1923 stories about a woman who stabbed her husband to death in a grisly fashion. The less than clear black and white photos bore a resemblance to Miss Gracing. When he read the articles he made special note of the fact that she was so horribly abused. He was truly shocked as he had not heard of anything like it in his lifetime.
Then he read the following issue covering the sentencing, when the judge took the photos into strong consideration, giving
her life in a mental prison. He supposed that the judge would have done better to include a period, after which, under good behavior, she would not be considered a menace to anyone and be released.
Her lawyer could have done a better job. He could have pleaded her “Not guilty, self-defense” and introduced the photos as evidence. He would also have done well to get a few women on the jury. The pictures again bore a disturbing uncanny likeness between Bonadea Carson and Miss Gracing. In rational moments he dismissed the thought and the passing time precluded any concrete way of comparing the faces. He also thought it possible that he merely missed his old friend, seeing her likeness in cloud formations and the patterns in floor bricks.
Morrigan merely found him overly imaginative.
As far as he knew, she had been teaching in Bayonne at least as far back as the 1930s. He dismissed the similarities as coincidences, until a few months later when he was perusing
“Boston” issues of a few years later. Bonnie was on the loose again. The pictures included in this issue made him stop using the word “coincidence.” Nine different photos were shown and each looked like his old friend. He’d like to know, but how could he ask her that? Then one day Morrigan informed him that she thought it was a good idea if she took a leave of absence from work when the baby was born. And worse, she also thought
that she’d like to stay home with the baby during its first few years of life.
He said; “I don’t make enough money to even cover the rent.”
“Since when do you worry about money?” she said, very surprised.
He laughed; “Believe it or not, always and especially now.”
She laughed, too; “We’ll be all right. I’ll hit my parents up for that wedding gift we never got.”
“I wouldn’t count on that one.”
“Do you really think they would take the chance of not being allowed to see their first and possibly only, grandchild?”
“You’re wicked, Morrigan.”
She put her hands around his waist and looked in his eyes, saying, “Want to see more?”
In a while Zeke was seeing things her way. Later he remembered that this could be a critical moment in at least three lives and he said; “I’ve been thinking about paying a call on Miss Gracing.”
“I miss her, too.”
“Want to come?”
“One of us is working, if you’ve forgotten.”
“Oh, yeah. Details, details, details.”
“Why don’t you go yourself? I wouldn’t mind having this place to myself for a week.”
He decided to surprise Miss Gracing with his new problem, a well-established precedent in place. He packed a few things and got a flight out of Albuquerque early the next day, landing at Newark International Airport. Old memories came back. When he left, Albuquerque was 76 degrees and sunny. Newark was 45 and drizzling off and on. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw a sky so close to the ground. He got a light jacket out of his bag and put it on. He kept looking at the clouds, drizzle and sky, not being able to tell where one ended and the other began.
It was almost like one gigantic, gray, layered, wet blob. His ruminations ended when he heard; “Cab?”
A sixty year old black guy in a beat up yellow car and a silly hat stopped near him.
Zeke said; “Yeah.”
“Where you going?”
“Bayonne.”
“Hop in. That’s my home.”
Zeke put his small bag in the back seat and followed it in.
He said; “I grew up there. This is the first time back in about five years.”
With an entertaining lilt in his voice, the cabbie said;
“You’re in for a surprise, my friend. Some changes have been made.”
“What?” Zeke’s voice and expression were far from lilting, as he didn’t want to hear that his place of origin was no more.
“I’m not gonna tell ya. You’ll see it for yourself soon enough.” As they passed through the bridge, back highways connecting Newark, Jersey City and Bayonne, Zeke saw the bay alongside, but again couldn’t see where the bay concluded its destination and the clouds, drizzle and sky began and hoped that this was not a portent of the sameness new “improvements”
generally bestow.
The cabbie interrupted his viewing of the low path to the heavens, looking in the rearview mirror and saying; “Where should I leave ya?”
“Twentieth Street and Avenue C.”
Upon reaching his destination, he saw the candy store and the weathered gray clapboard apartment above it. But, right across the street, heading downtown toward the old school, he saw some of the changes the cabbie was talking about and decided to see what went on in Miss Gracing’s world before he stopped in. What he remembered being there was gone and in its place was small new single family houses on 50 x 100 lots.
He was shocked and walked slowly downtown, wondering where the devastation ended. When he got to 17th Street, site of the
old school and schoolyard, faux clapboard metal sided condos now prevailed. Unlike old times, he was the only one walking on the street. Like old times he was in a bit of a trance, visually remembering what the place used to look like, the old family furniture and toy stores with apartments above, the ice cream shop operated by one family in the basement of their row house and the shoe shine shop. He continued walking to 15th Street and when he could still not see any end to the new expensive looking lack of character, he turned back uptown to get back to Miss Gracing’s.
There were more cars on the road than he previously recalled. Maybe Bayonne had gone the way of the suburbs; no one walking to local shops, as they no longer existed, necessitating car trips to the malls. He was to learn that in the early days of “urban renewal” the authorities had the right to condemn and demolish substandard structures and replace them with new standard ones, at the same time replacing the old substandard people with new standard models. The process became commonly known as progress, gentrification, civic improvement and a host of other euphemisms connoting something good. An end to neighborhoods was not an acceptable description. It seemed to Zeke that it was something more akin to the purging of the Indians. Brave new world.