Carol Emshwiller - Mrs Jones

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Mrs. Jones

by Carol Emshwiller

* * * *

CORA IS A MORNING PERSON. Her sister, Janice, hardly feels conscious till late

afternoon. Janice nibbles fruit and berries and complains of her stomach. Cora eats

potatoes with butter and sour cream. She likes being fat. It makes her feel powerful

and hides her wrinkles. Janice thinks being thin and willowy makes her look young,

though she would admit that--and even though Cora spends more time outside doing

the yard and farm work--Cora’s skin does look smoother. Janice has a slight stutter.

Normally she speaks rapidly and in a kind of shorthand so as not to take up

anyone’s precious time, but with her stutter, she can hold people’s attention for a

moment longer than she would otherwise dare. Cora, on the other hand, speaks

slowly and if she had ever stuttered would have seen to it that she learned not to.

Cora bought a genuine kilim rug to offset, she said, the bad taste of the

flowery chintz covers Janice got for the couch and chairs. The rug and chairs look

terrible in the same room, but Cora insists that her rug be there. Janice retaliated by

pawning Mother’s silver candelabras. Cora had never liked them, but she made a

fuss anyway, and she left Janice’s favorite silver spoon in the mayonnaise jar until,

polish as she would, Janice could never get rid of the blackish look. Janice punched

a hole in each of Father’s rubber boots. Cora wears them anyway. She hasn’t said a

single word about it, but she hangs her wet socks up conspicuously in the kitchen.

They wish they’d gotten married and moved away from their parent’s old

farm house. They wish . . . desperately that they’d had children, though they know

nothing of children--or husbands for that matter. As girls they worked hard at

domestic things: canning, baking bread and pies, sewing . . . waiting to be good

wives to almost anybody, but nobody came to claim them.

Janice is the one who worries. She’s worried right now because she saw a

light out in the far corner of the orchard--a tiny, flickering light. She can just barely

make it out through the misty rain. Cora says, “Nonsense.” (She’s angry because

it’s just the sort of thing Janice would notice first.) Cora laughs as Janice goes

around checking and re-checking all the windows and doors to see that they’re

securely locked. When Janice has finished, and stands staring out at the rain, she has

a change of heart. “Whoever’s out there must be cold and wet. Maybe hungry.”

“Nonsense,” Cora says again. “Besides, whoever’s out there probably

deserves it.”

Later, as Cora watches the light from her bedroom window, she thinks

whoever it is who’s camping out down there is probably eating her apples and

making a mess. Cora likes to sleep with the windows open a crack even in weather

like this, and she prides herself on her courage, but, quietly, so that Janice, in the

next room, won’t hear, she eases her windows shut and locks them.

In the morning the rain has stopped though it’s foggy. Cora goes out (with

Father’s walking stick, and wearing Father’s boots and battered canvas hat) to the

far end of the orchard. Something has certainly been there. It had pulled down

perfectly good, live, apple branches to make the nests. Cora doesn’t like the way it

ate apples, either, one or two bites out of lots of them, and then it looks as if it had

made itself sick and threw up not far from the fire. Cora cleans everything so it looks

like no one has been there. She doesn’t want Janice to have the satisfaction of

knowing anything about it.

That afternoon, when Cora has gone off to have their pickup truck greased,

Janice goes out to take a look. She, also, takes Father’s walking stick, but she wears

Mother’s floppy, pink hat. She can see where the fire’s been by the black smudge,

and she can tell somebody’s been up in the tree. She notices things Cora hadn’t:

little claw marks on a branch, a couple of apples that had been bitten into still

hanging on the tree near the nesting place. There’s a tiny piece of leathery stuff stuck

to one sharp twig. It’s incredibly soft and downy and has a wet-dog smell. Janice

takes it, thinking it might be an important clue. Also she wants to have something to

show that she’s been down there and seen more than Cora has.

Cora comes back while Janice is upstairs taking her nap. She sits down in the

front room and reads an article in the Reader’s Digest about how to help your

husband communicate. When she hears Janice come down the stairs, Cora goes up

for her nap. While Cora naps, Janice sets out grapes and a tangerine, and scrambles

one egg. As she eats her early supper, she reads the same article Cora has just read.

She feels sorry for Cora who seems to have nothing more exciting than this sort of

thing to read (along with her one hundred great books) whereas Janice has been

reading: HOW FAMOUS COUPLES GET THE MOST OUT OF THEIR SEX

LIVES. Just one of many such books that she keeps locked in her bedside cabinet.

When she finishes eating, she cleans up the kitchen so it looks as if she hadn’t been

there.

Cora comes down when Janice is in the front parlor (sliding doors shut)

listening to music. She has it turned so low Cora can hardly make it out. Might be

Vivaldi. It’s as if Janice doesn’t want Cora to hear it in case she might enjoy it. At

least that’s how Cora takes it. Cora opens a can of spaghetti. For desert she takes a

couple of apples from the “special” tree. She eats on the closed-in porch, watching

the clouds. It looks as if it’ll rain again tonight.

About eight-thirty they each look out their different windows and see that the

flickering light is there again. Cora says, “Damn it to hell,” so loud that Janice hears

from two rooms away. At that moment Janice begins to like the little light. Thinks it

looks inviting. Homey. She forgets that she found that funny piece of leather and

those claw marks. Thinks most likely there’s a young couple in love out there. Their

parents disapprove and they have no place else to go but her orchard. Or perhaps

it’s a young person. Teenager, maybe, cold and wet. She has a hard time sleeping,

worrying and wondering about whoever it is, though she’s still glad she locked the

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