Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg Page B

share. She feels like a patient in a hospital, being visited by people who stand back a little too far and glow with good health.
    She'll try a stream-of-consciousness piece just for fun, and see what happens. Before , Helen types, then stares at the word so long it transforms itself into an ideogram: it is a stout governess, pushing a pram. Before. Before … Helen sighs, takes a sip of the cooling coffee, turns to look out the window. The winter sky is colored pale apricot; the day has just begun, and she's already stuck. Back to that familiar place of no place at all.
    She hears the sound of air brakes, and here comes the garbage truck rounding the corner. Once again she has forgotten to put out the trash—she has two weeks' worth in the garage and despite the cold, it's beginning to stink. She rushes downstairs and bundles newspapers into paper bags, carries them and the kitchen trash out to the bins, then rolls them to the curb. She arrives just as the truck is pulling away from the house next door, the house that comes after hers. “Hey!” she yells at the truck. She pulls her coat tighter around her nightgown, and runs in her slippers after the truck, praying she won't fall on the icy sidewalk. “Hey!” The truck stops and a man pokes his head out the window. “Can you back up?” she yells. “Can you come back and get my trash?” Loud beeps sound as the truck slowly backs up. Helen holds up her hand and yells thank you. The man waves back, and he is frowning. It is not anger, it is concern. Well, she is in her nightgown, her hair wild about her head. Her coat is flapping open, hanging off one shoulder, now. Her slippers are full of snow. Also, apparently, she is crying—she can feel the wetness on her face. She runs back to the house, tries the door, and finds it locked. “No!” she wails, but then remembers the spare key hidden on the porch. When she finds it beneath a planter, it seems to her to be a miracle all out of proportion and she nearly weeps again. She is aware that, not so very long ago, all of this would have been funny, a good story.
    Inside the house, she changes from wet slippers to bed socks, and returns to her study. On the computer screen, she looks at the one word she has typed. Before . In her mind, she sees a jewelry case, absent of wares. Its wooden corners are nicked, the glass scratched. These flaws are all there is to focus on, now that the cabinet is empty. The image widens, and she sees everything so clearly, the maroon carpet of the store, worn nearly silver in places that were heavily trafficked. The dusty plate-glass window, yellow sun pushing through to the display space, empty but for dead flies. The outline on the walls of the merchandise that used to hang there. She can smell the air, the ironed smell of an overheated room. Keys to cabinets lie on top of the empty cases. There is a door at the back of the store, slightly ajar. Behind it, a small bathroom, the toilet ruined by rust, a few paper towels still on the roll, at the edge of the little sink a thin bar of soap cracked with age and turned up at the ends like a potato chip. A small, high window with bars behind it. Why bars? Why a jewelry store? In any case, the image doesn't inspire her. It sits in her brain and then it fades away, and then there is only the sound of a ticking clock, a passing car.
    She sits with her hands in her lap. Rubs the back of her neck. Picks up a fetish stone, the bear with the turquoise chip on his back, and holds it until it is warm in her hand, then puts it back in its place. Sits still again. A row of icicles hangs outside her study window and she counts them: twenty-seven. This seems an excessive number to her. Her neighbor's house does not have such icicles. She remembers that she never got around to having the gutters cleaned. After two hours of accomplishing nothing, she turns her computer off.
    She will dress. Then she will make a grocery list. There is laundry to do, baking for the