Mrs. Tiece glared at them as if they were toadstools. “Thanks for giving Henry a game.”
“Anytime, Clara, anytime,” said Kit Random.
“I’ll just leave these with you.” Henry handed over the marbles hastily. “No room at my place.”
“I want you to cut the grass,” said Mrs. Tiece.
He and Mrs. Tiece sort of walked across the street, he not looking at her, she keeping up so he walked faster, she increasing her pace, he increasing his until they almost leaped up the porch steps. He ran to the door first, she tailed after. The door-slam was such that birds abandoned their nests three houses down.
The next incident occurred exactly an hour later. Mr. Tiece was out mowing the lawn, his eyes fixed to the rotating machine and each of one hundred clover blossoms, all with tiny heads like Mrs. Tiece.
He cut furiously east, west, north, south, perspiring and wiping his brow as Mrs. Tiece shouted, “Don’t miss the outer drive! And down the middle, you missed a ridge. Watch that stone, you’ll ruin the cutter!”
Exactly at two o’clock two trucks drove up in front of Miss Kit Random’s house and a couple of laborers began tossing dirt out of Miss Random’s lawn. By four o’clock they poured a solid sheet of cement all over Miss Random’s yard.
At five o’clock, the truck drove off, taking Miss Kit Random’s lawn with it, at which point Miss Kit Random waved over to Mr. Tiece. “Won’t have to mow this lawn again for a couple years I guess!” She laughed.
Mr. Tiece started to laugh back when he sensed someone hidden inside the dark screen door. Mr. Tiece ducked inside. This time, with the door-slam, two potted geraniums fell off the porch rail.
“The nerve of that woman.”
“Did it on purpose.”
“Trying to make us look like slave drivers. Putting cement over her lawn. Giving Mr. Tiece ideas. Well, we’re not cementing our lawn, he’ll cut it every week, or my name isn’t Clara Moon Tiece!”
The three ladies snorted over their knitting.
“Seems like some sort of plot to me,” said Mrs. Coles. “Look at her backyard, a jungle, nothing in its right place.”
“Tell us about the marble game again, Clara.”
“Good grief. There he was down on his knees, both laughing. I—wait a minute. You hear something?”
It was twilight, just after supper, and the three women on Mrs. Coles’ porch right next door. “That Clock Woman’s out in her backyard again, laughing.”
“Swinging in her swing?”
“Listen. Shh!”
“I haven’t done this in years!” a man’s voice laughed. “Always wanted to, but folks think you’re crazy! Hey!”
“Who’s that?” cried Mrs. Coles.
The three women clapped their hands to their thumping chests and lurched to the far end of the porch, panicked excursioners on a sinking ship.
“Here you go!” cried Kit Random, giving a push.
And there in her backyard going up in the green leaves one way, then down and swooping up on the other, in the twilight air was a laughing man.
“Don’t that sound a bit like your Mr. Coles?” one of the ladies wondered.
“The idea!”
“Oh, Fanny.”
“The idea!”
“Oh, Fanny, go to sleep,” said Mr. Coles in bed. The room was warm and dark. She sat like a great lump of ice cream glowing in the dim room at eleven o’clock.
“Ought to be run out of town.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He punched his pillow. “It was just a backyard swing, haven’t swung in years. Big damn swing, plenty hefty to ride a man. You left me to finish the dishes so you could go out and blather with those hens, I went to toss out the garbage and there she was swinging in the swing and I said how nice it looked and she said did I want to try? So, by God, I just climbed over to pump myself up for a ride.”
“And cackling like an idiot rooster.”
“Not cackling, damn it, but laughing. I wasn’t pinching her behind, was I?” He punched his pillow twice more and rolled over.
In his sleep she heard him mumble, “Best damn swing I ever swung,” which set her off into a new fit of weeping.
It remained only for Mr. Clements to jump off the cliff the next afternoon. Mrs. Clements found him blowing bubbles on Miss Kit Random’s back garden wall, discussing the formation, clarity, and coloration of same with her.
Her phonograph was warbling an old tune from World War I sung by the Knickerbocker Quartet titled “The Worst Is Yet to Come.” Mrs. Clements acted out the song’s words by grabbing Mr. Clements by the ear and lugging him off.
“That woman’s yard,” said Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements, and Mrs. Tiece, “is, as of this hour, day, and minute, forbidden territory.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mr. Coles, Mr. Clements, and Mr. Tiece,
“You are not to say good morning or good night, Nurse, to her,” said Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements, and Mrs. Tiece.
“Of course not, dear,” said the husbands behind their newspapers.
“You hear me?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” came the chorus. From then on Mr. Coles, Mr. Clements, and Mr. Tiece could be seen mowing lawns, fixing lights, trimming hedges, painting doors, cleaning windows, washing dishes, digging bulbs, watering trees, fertilizing flowers, rushing to work, rushing back, bending, flexing, running, pausing, reaching, busy at a thousand and one tasks with a thousand and one perspirations.
Whereas in Kit Random’s clocks had stopped, flowers died or went insane with abundance. Doorknobs fell off if you tapped them, trees shed their leaves in mid-summer for lack of water; paint flaked from doors, and the electric light-system, burnt out, was replaced with candles rammed in wine jugs: a paradise of neglect, a beautiful chaos.
Somewhere along the line Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements and Mrs. Tiece were stunned at the pure unadulterated nerve of Kit Random shoving notes in their mailboxes during the night, inviting them to come by at four next day for poisoned tea.
They absolutely refused.
And went.
Kit Random poured them all the orange pekoe which was her favorite and then sat back, smiling.
“It was nice of you ladies to come,” she said.
The ladies nodded grimly.
“There’s a lot for us to talk about,” she added.
The ladies waited stone-cold, leaning toward the door.
“I feel you don’t understand me at all,” said Kit Random. “I feel I must explain everything.”
They waited.
“I’m a maiden lady with a private income.”
“Looks suspiciously private to me,” observed Mrs. Tiece.
“Suspiciously,” echoed Mrs. Cole.
Mrs. Clements was about to toss her teabag in the cup when Kit Random uncorked a laugh.
“I can see no matter what I say you’ll add sugar lumps and stir your spoons so loud I can’t be heard.”
“Try us,” said Mrs. Tiece.
Kit Random reached over to pick up a shiny brass tube and twist it.
“What’s that?” asked all three at once and then covered their mouths as if embarrassed not one of them had said anything original.
“One of them toy kaleidoscopes.” Kit Random shut one eye to squint through the odd-colored shards. “Right now I’m examining your gizzards. Know what I find?”
“How could we possibly care?” cried Mrs. Clements. The others nodded at her snappy retort.
“I see a solid potato.” Kit Random fixed the device to X-ray Mrs. Tiece, then moved to the others. “A rutabaga and a nice round turnip. No innards, stomach, spleen, or heart. I’ve listened. No pulse, just solid flesh, fit to burst your corsets. And your tongues? Not connected to your cerebral cortex … “
“Our cerebral what?” cried Mrs. Tiece, offended.
“Cortex. Not as off-color as it sounds. And I’ve made a brave decision. Don’t get up.”
The three women squirmed in their chairs and Kit Random said:
“I’m going to take your husbands, one by one. I’m going to, in the words of the old song, steal their hearts away. Or what’s there if you left any on the plate.
I’ve decided that flimsy-whimsy as I am, I’ll be a darn sight better midnight or high-noon companion than all of you in a bunch. Don’t speak, don’t leave. I’m almost done. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Oh, yes, one thing. Love these fine men. But I don’t think it crossed your minds, it’s so long ago. Look at their faces. See how they crush their straw hats down hard over their ears and grind their teeth in their sleep.
Heck, I can hear it way over here! And make fists when they walk, with no one to hit. So stand back, don’t even try to interfere. And how will I do it? With cribbage and dead man’s poker, and miniature golf in my garden, I’ll pull flowers to sink par-three holes.
Then there’s blackjack, dominoes, checkers, chess, beer and ice cream, hot dogs noons, hamburgers midnights, phonograph moonlight dancing, fresh beds, clean linens, singing in the shower allowed, litter all week, clean up on Sundays, grow a mustache or beard, go barefoot at croquet. When the beer stops, gin stays. Hold on! Sit!” Kit Random lectured on:
“I can see what you think, you got faces like sieves. No, I’m not the Hoor of Babylon, nor the Tart from Le Petit Trianon, which, incidentally, is not a movie-house.
I am a traveling Jungle Gym, first cousin to a sideshow, never a beauty, almost a freak. But one day years back, I decided not to make one man sad but a handful happy! I found I was trying to win all the time, which is an error beyond most women’s imagination. If you make a man lose all the time, hell, he’ll go play golf or handball and lose right.
At least he can add it up! So I started out, two years in Placerville, three in Tallahassee and Kankakee until I ran out of steam or my rolling stock rusted.
