An old woman sat in a chair in a waiting room yesterday in The Dalles waiting for her husband trying to read a dime store novel. The novel, well worn. It had been read several times. I wondered if it had been by her. I watched her try to start it again. She never got further than the first few sentences.
On the TV above her— one of those fixer-upper shows— a younger, attractive woman walzed an older couple through their newly-renovated home. They must have said “Oh my!” three dozen times before the Shakespearean comedy wore off and mildewed. I decided to interrupt the old lady’s sixth attempt at her novel. I felt it was a kind thing to do. I asked her if was she from The Dalles? I’m not sure this was a kindness.
She told me she was born and raised in Goldendale. I had seen them earlier in the week. They drove a white suburban. Her husband wore Stihl suspenders which had tired years ago holding up his torn jeans and his work shirt, thinning from wear like a dog with mange, lacked cuff buttons on his right sleeve. A logger. Still working at seventy. If he wasn’t a phoenix yet on fire, he was smouldering. The room behind the waiting room displayed the universal symbol for Radiation.
West of The Dalles, on the bluff high above the river in view of the Columbia sits a vacant house. I could almost see it from the waiting room. It’s the Uedelhoffen place. Bruno has gone back to France. Marian is gone too. I try to imagine what Bruno thought when Marion asked to stay an Uedelhoffen. She probably didn’t yodel, but I’m sure she laughed.
Twelve years ago she sat in my living room and won a three-disc set of songs by Cat Stevens on one of those nights you have two steals and on the third steal you get to keep it. She stole it from me and went home with it, but not before she saw my disappointment.
I saw her in the supermarket a summer or two ago and she said she had something for me, and ran back to her car and gave me a small bag. I thought she had brought me plums. It was the Cat Stevens discs. It was a kindness. One of those kindnesses you remember. I thought her cancer was in remission. She died a few weeks later of cancer. I can’t hear a Cat Stevens song without seeing her smile in that store.
My kindness to the old woman was essentially-inconsequential, and to be honest, a distraction. She got up when her husband came out, and he said something insensitive to her I didn’t quite hear, but it did not seem to effect her. He walked out ahead of her to the parking lot into his white Suburban’s passenger side and she got behind the wheel and drove slowly down the hill toward the freeway that leads to The Dalles Bridge and crossed beneath the roar of the dams spillways into Washington toward the intersection two miles further that turns east into the treelessness of Goldendale’s golden fields and wind turbine scarecrows. They have five acres out of town, she said. The chores were stacking up like flapjacks, she said. It was the metaphor. I hadn’t told her I taught American literature. Her kindness.
Sharing your story is a kindness. Thank you, Doug.