From the story When Murray Met Helen

The green tea did not silence Helen’s headache, though it did at least dull the irritation settling into her throat.

Just before the sun set, the low clouds dissipated just enough to create a seam in the southwestern part of the sky. A shaft of light seeped through. With a glance toward her bedroom window she could see a pink-orangish glow outside.

Alpenglow? In Milwaukee?

It was one of those things you had to see to believe. But there it was, the peach light reflecting off the snow on the ground, the branches, and the quilt of dry flakes that had piled up on the awnings, inching over the sides.

From her window Helen looked into what used to be Murray’s backyard and noticed the snow-blanketed outlines of the picnic table where so much laughter and banter and wisdom had passed between them. The snow on top sparkled. It sparkled mango, and then plum, and then bluish-purple, as the turning earth fleetingly captured what was left of the sun. It was a sight so tranquil and ethereal, and then in a matter of seconds it was gone. It left her wondering if anybody would believe her description of it.

At that very picnic table, now a dull form in the gloaming, she once asked Murray if he thought she would make a good mother.

“Do you want to be a mother?” he’d replied.

“Some days,” she’d said.

“And what days would those be?” he asked.

“Not Mondays,” she replied with a laugh. “Especially not Mondays.”

“Oh, I think you’d make a very good mother,” Murray said softly, after thinking hard on it for a few moments.

“I’ll probably need a man then,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

“Possibly,” Murray said. “But I wouldn’t fret over that too much now. You gotta get this Monday thing straightened out first.”

From the story When Murray Met Helen

Helen was so moved by the faded photograph of Murray and Claire, and Claire’s resemblance to Helen in her childhood, that she could go no further into the collection. After staring at the picture for another half-minute she gently placed the album on top of the weathered leather jacket in the crate, pulled the string to turn out the light, and left the room.

The cold she was fighting had moved more deeply into her sinuses and though it had the effect of quieting her brain and dulling her senses, she was also keenly aware that the revelation of this softly kept secret in her relationship with Murray was colored with poignancy and grace. It was also a bit mind-reeling.

She walked upstairs, set water on the stove to make tea, and then leaned against the sink, staring at the cinnamon tiles on her kitchen floor. It had started to snow again, the late afternoon sky a grayish-yellow. But she only noticed the dull pallor of the light coming in the window behind her.

Before the kettle whistled, the phone rang. She could see by the caller ID that it was Rick. She thought for two rings about not answering it, but she missed him just enough to change her mind.

“Hello?”

“Helen?”

“Hi Rick.”

“How you doin’?”

“Gotta cold.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“‘Cause I’m fit as a fiddle.”

“Well, maybe you’re a carrier.”

“Naw, that couldn’t be it.”

“That’s right,” she suddenly agreed. “I didn’t let you get close enough to kiss me the other night.”

“Eh.” he said, “lucky me.”

“What’s up?”

“Was wondering if I could”—and here he changed inflections, to pose the last two words in the form of a question–“come over?”

The kettle whistled. Saved by the bell, she thought. But the moments it took to remove it from the burner had given her enough time to think.

“Well,” she said. “Three things.”

“Just three?” he asked, playfully.

“Well, at least three,” she continued. “First, you’re a dear and I’m sorry about what happened the other night. Second, I’m not feeling very attractive right now and when I’m not feeling pretty, I get a little bitchy. And, third, I think I really need to sleep.”

Rick was speechless for a few moments as he absorbed this direct and unusual declination.

“Yeah, well, I really don’t want to see you if you’re not feeling pretty,” he deadpanned.

She giggled.

“Thank you for making me laugh,” she said.

“What are you taking?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Green tea and echinacea.”

“Oooooh,” Rick replied, “I was just reading in Time where the new studies show echinacea’s a canard.”

Helen let that sit for a second, as she decided what club she’d use to smack him with.

“It works for me,” she said, in a tone that was purposefully ambiguous as to whether she was being playful, or just sending the message that this was not the time to trifle with Helen.

“Ah,” Rick said, wisely seizing the latter interpretation. “Now that’s a good data point.”

“The tea works too,” she added, as she tried, on her end, to make sure he didn’t hear her giggle.

From the story When Murray Met Helen

Helen stared briefly at the faded ivory-colored cover of the album wondering if she should even open it. This was a man and a family now gone, she realized, and who knew what threads of what stories were preserved within the pages.  

Can you measure a life by what’s left behind? She was curious about the answer, but she also felt oddly protective, not of anything she could hold in her hand, but of what she held in her memory of her friend and neighbor. Part of her didn’t want to know anything that would cast Murray in a different light, or begin to displace or shift her dearest impressions of the man she’d known, if not perfectly, certainly well enough to enrich her life.

On the first page of the album was a handsome black & white wedding photo of Murray’s parents taken in the doorway of a church. His mom, with her tightly curled dark hair, had a smile that brought to mind Amelia Earhart. She was a good six inches shorter than Murray’s father, who was well-appointed in a tuxedo; thinning hair, terse smile, solid chin.

Helen turned the page to find the two of them standing together, still a young couple, in a garden, with Murray’s mother playfully holding a butternut squash in one hand and an ear of corn in the other. Murray’s father, his face now tanned and with a smile so wide you could see most of his teeth, had one arm around his wife and one arm wrapped around a long shovel, with the blade nearly touching his cheek.

Then there was an article and pictures about the Minocqua fire of 1912, a small disaster made worse by a hare-brained and panicked attempt to blow the fire out with dynamite.

On page 6 was the yellowed birth announcement of their son, Murray, from January 1924. And then on the next page, the birth announcement, from 1926, of a daughter, named Claire Louise.

Murray never mentioned he’d had a sister.

Three pages later was the photograph that knocked Helen back on her heels. It was of Murray and Claire together, sitting arm and arm, their legs dangling over a dock on Butternut Lake. It would be hard to picture two happier children. Although they were separated by a half century in age, it was also clear from the photo that Claire Louise, at eight years old, could easily have been mistaken for an eight-year-old Helen. And vice-versa.

From the story When Murray Met Helen

For Helen, the highlight of Monday was that neither Renard nor Harry Michaels were badly injured hauling Murray’s six crates down to her basement. They were obviously struggling with the heavier pieces and still persisted even when she implored them to stop so that she and Rick could at least finish the job.

“What is it about the greatest generation that it refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer?” she asked.

“Chivalry,” Renard replied curtly, as he wrestled to keep crate number four on the dolly.

“Men,” Helen thought to herself, assigning the word its seventh meaning, as in ‘hopeless.’

When they were finished she mercifully served them cocoa before they departed in the now ten below zero weather. Then she hurried to get dressed and catch a bus for what turned out to be her fruitless job interview with the securities lawyer.

Tuesday she woke up with a cold and called to cancel her only appointment. Given the numbing cold it was as good a day as any not to go outside. She built a fire from the logs Rick had brought in Sunday night, made a pot of lemon tea, and sat by the fireplace reading a small stack of New Yorkers. She couldn’t quite solve the question in the back of her mind about whether Rick was being too thin-skinned or whether she had provoked him by denouncing Shakespeare in Love. Part of her still wanted to ice him to see how he handled it, and the other part of her wanted to console him with a hug or at least a phone call. Her mother had a saying. “Just because you take a shine to a guy, it doesn’t mean that you still don’t have to break him in.”

But, really, who the hell knows about love and courtship? she figured. And how could something so silly as an impetuous quarrel over a movie become so complicated?

It was at times like these that she missed a game that she and Murray would play across his backyard picnic table on long summer evenings. It was a fast-paced exchange of confessions, of things they would binge on, but then grow tired of and not revisit for months, or years even.

“Smoked almonds,” he’d start.
“Ice cold tomato juice,” she’d reply.
“French onion soup,” said he.
“Tuna casserole with sweet peas and French fried onions on top,” said Helen.
“Kilbasa,” said Murray.
“Toll house cookies,” she said.
“Snickerdoodles,” said he.
“Clam chowder.”
“Sun dried tomatoes.”
“Pillsbury crescent rolls.”
“Baked potatoes with real butter, sour cream and bacon bits.”
“Fleetwood Mac,” she chimed in.
“Mac ’n cheese,” he volleyed back.
“Dutch apple pie,” said Helen.
“Lionel Hampton,” said Murray.
“Eggnog,” said Helen.
“Crab cakes,” said Murray.
“Peanut M&Ms.”
“Gorgonzola.”
“Ham loaf.”
“Ham loaf?” Murray asked, “what the hell is ham loaf?”

“It’s something my mom used to make, like meatloaf, you know, only with ham and pork shoulder.”

“Like Spam?”

“No, much better than Spam and, by the way, you lose,” she declared in a sing-song voice.

“Okay,” he’d said, “double or nothing. Zucchini bread.”

“Pickled asparagus,” she answered.

And so on, into the evening, sometimes sharing beer, sometimes lemonade, sometimes peppermint schnapps, and always long past the hour in which stars would become visible above them.

A little after three in the afternoon Helen went downstairs to the basement and grabbed a claw hammer. She sneezed twice while she pried open the first box, and even with her cold she could detect its epochal smell, musty with odors of white pine, wool, and old papers and the glue from book bindings. On top were a couple hundred-year-old saws for cutting ice. Beneath an old leather jacket with a fleece lining she found an album. On the cover, someone had written: “Butternut Lake/Minocqua 1933-’34.”