Guts Chapter 4

The story so far: The Old Sales Woman is showing her niece Sara the stores she used to sell gift boxes to while living in Rutland in the ’70s. She is reminded of the day she noticed her husband’s car parked outside a fancy men’s store and begins to tell her niece about the rest of that day. I just worked my way down the street, door to door, counter to counter, out in the cold, into the heat. Hello! Hello! Good morning! I was on autopilot. As I left one store and headed to the next, I refused to look back at the Toyota. When I‘d worked my way to the corner of the street, I started around the block. I told myself when I‘m done working this block, the Toyota will be gone and I’ll never be sure it was Roy’s car in the first place. But after a square block of stores, about two hours of calls, it was still there, in front of the men’s store, but now there was movement around it. The passenger door was opening. I watched as Roy helped a tiny, pretty blonde girl into the Toyota. My two sample cases dropped to the sidewalk, in the dirty snow. The girl looked dainty. She was laughing. She had on spike-heeled boots, no hat, no scarf, and looked attractively chilly, but not cold. Just keep moving, I mumbled to myself, just sell something, laser your attention, phrases I mumbled to myself for years to come, but never with as much concentration as that morning. But that didn’t work. After a couple of minutes, I dragged, hiked, and hitched myself and my cases down the sidewalk to the car, blasted the heater, and drove around Rutland for an hour. I probably thought about going to a dollar movie. I did that a lot back then, just to escape and be warm. I might have gone to one, but I’m not sure I could have sat through it. Probably around two o’clock, maybe later, I headed to the flat. When I passed the library I saw the Toyota. That at least was part of the routine and was strangely reassuring. When I got back to the flat, I immediately peeled off the layers and got in the tub. I brought in a tumbler full of zinfandel and stayed through Password and Match Game. Sara broke in. “So, you were upset, mad.” “Oh, I was upset and mad and all that stuff.” “Did you pack up? Did you leave?” “No. I didn’t” “Why not?” I couldn’t tell her that, but I could tell her about the rest of the day. So I continued. About three o’clock or so that day it started to storm. When Roy wasn’t home by seven, I went on alert. I wandered the flat, bumping into furniture, not sitting for more than a minute, listening to the weather report on TV. There was a storm alert. Icy conditions were reported. I was now officially on duty. If he was in trouble and could get to a phone, I would go on the rescue mission, regardless of the circumstances of the day. Roy finally got in about eight-thirty. I probably tried to act cool and unconcerned because that’s how we were with each other. We thought we were giving each other a break being that way, or at least, I did. Roy wasn’t home a half-hour when the phone rang. He had to deliver a case of glasses to the Killington Ski Resort about 18 miles away. The case of glasses cost about $19. The commission would be about $2.50. It isn’t a lot of money now and it wasn’t a lot of money then. That hasn’t changed. I told Roy so, and I begged him not to go. But he was going. Killington was potentially a big account and it was the general manager himself who called. I told him I was going with him. I put on a few layers and hoped the car wasn’t hooked on the stump. Continued in Chapter 5