Grumpy Old Ladies

"I'm not old," Donna said, half whining and half incredulously, and recoiling as her youngest daughter tried to take the plate full of mini quiches right out of her hands. She was quicker, though, and turned her body to keep them out of reach.

Christina rolled her eyes in the same exact way Donna herself had always done with her own mother. Christina had always been the most like her, and she'd probably known what Donna was thinking. Donna glared back, praying she didn't look like her mother but fearing she did, and they both squared their shoulders in the same manner.

Refusing to admit defeat, Christina picked up a basket of muffins. "Aww," she said, tilting her head, "Lemon poppy! Dad's favorite!"

She sounded like she was going to start crying again, which Donna didn't think she could take, so she interrupted her daughter before she could get much further and said, "He would have killed me if I didn't have some lemon poppy muffins at this."

This wasn't strictly true. Ollie had been a practical man, and he probably would have thought that having his favorite food at his own wake was a silly thing, but Donna had baked them during a flurry of kitchen work and wasn't prepared to explain why.

At the doorway, Donna closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Just keep moving, she told herself. Just keep moving.

All week she'd had so much to do. Sunup to sundown, calling this person and calling that person. Answering questions and making arrangements. She'd said thank you to everyone who reached out to her, but there was a whole other level to it underneath the basic decency of communication that she wasn't sure that even she was grasping. It was hard to do much thinking. Her brain felt numb.

Through the crowd, she spotted Christina exchanging a glance with her twin brother, Henry. They had their own near-telepathic communication methods, and Donna loved to share examples of it to underline how close a bond they had. She didn't appreciate it being used against her, though it was difficult to keep track of why she was annoyed with them. She'd wanted them to help more during the week, despite the fact that she knew they were all busy, and all lived so far away, but now that they'd arrived she was frustrated when they kept trying to do things for her.

A touch at her elbow snapped her out of her mental fog, and brought her back to the moment.

"Oh! Hello!" Donna cried, throwing her arms around Regina Evans, a neighbor from down the street.

"Donna," Regina said, hugging her back. "Lovely wake. Ollie will be missed."

"Thank you," she replied, disentangling herself and nodding. "He was a good man."

"I just wanted to catch you up. You didn't miss much at the executive meeting on Tuesday."

"I missed the meeting?" Donna said, stunned.

"Not to worry, not to worry. No one expected you to be there. Your mailbox ivy resolution passed."

Donna just blinked. She couldn't believe she'd lost so much time. Suddenly it felt like the world had rushed past her when she wasn't looking, and she wondered what else she might have lost track of.

"Yeah," Regina said, nodding, "so we've got Steve purchasing a stock of seeds and some sticks to help them grow upright, and then I'm gonna have Millie and Julieann write up some instructions for planting them around. We should have that all coming around door to door, and by June we'll all have some very pretty flowering growth coming up along the roadside. Should be stunning."

In her proposal, she'd offered to do all of those things, and it was disheartening to be cut out. Maybe it's a good thing to have that taken off my plate, she thought, and then, out loud, she said, "Oh, that'll be beautiful."

Regina touched her elbow again, politely, and turned back toward where her husband and son were conversing with others.

Donna wiped the corner of her eyes carefully. Her makeup was waterproof, but one never really knew. Once she started thinking about it, she felt her heart rate racing, so she moved to the side so she could see herself in the mirror next to the closet. Her makeup was fine, though she still hated her dress. It didn't fit her at all. She'd almost had a complete meltdown at the dress shop in town.

Almost all of her kids had made it home for the service. Five out of six were there with her, shaking hands and handing out hugs. Only Laurie, who, technically, was not actually her child but had more or less grown up under her roof, hadn't been able to make the trip, but she and Donna had been able to Facetime a couple times during the week and that had been comforting. Laurie was a good kid even though she persisted in making a living so far away.

Over the course of the afternoon, hundreds of people came through. Most of the neighborhood stopped by to pay their respects, and nearly all of Ollie's coworkers. More family members than she could count. She found herself repeating phrases like "I don't know how I'll get along without him," and "Ollie was my rock," very mechanically. Reflexively.

She was pretty sure these were things widows said. She must have heard them somewhere, on a TV show or something. Everyone seemed to accept her axioms at face value, which was good, because she had been having an increasingly hard time keeping her thoughts straight. Had anyone asked her a question that required more thought than a stock answer, she might have cracked. Twenty-six years of marriage. She'd been with him since she was twenty, more than half of her life, and any attempt to think about what came after Ollie was simply unfathomable.

The doorbell rang late in the afternoon, and Donna frowned. She was sure she'd checked everyone on her mental list of relatives and acquaintances, and even if she'd missed one the service pamphlet was pretty clear to simply come in.

The police officer looked very young, and very flustered, when she opened the door. Increasingly so, as numerous guests in black behind her quieted and turned.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," he said, managing to keep his eyes on Donna's. His older partner was not as discreet, and stared at her cleavage quite openly whenever Donna wasn't looking at him.

Donna straightened her back, making her ample chest quiver, and gave him a bristling glare. "Yes?" she said, impatiently, and immediately regretted her tone.

"Um... there was a noise complaint for this address."

Donna snapped her attention to the younger officer, who was sweating slightly, still keeping his eyes respectfully on approximately the right level without quite meeting her gaze.

"A noise complaint?"

"Yes, ma'am, we received an anonymous phone call earlier this afternoon. We're just following up."

She immediately knew who that anonymous caller was, and couldn't stop her physical reaction of turning and glaring around the door frame toward her left hand neighbor's house. Instead of calling that woman all the expletives she deserved, though, Donna froze. Her urge to communicate her frustration suffered a very polite evisceration by the good and proper front that she put up in front of guests and friends.

There was an explosive sigh behind her, and Donna glanced over her shoulder. Lennox, Laurie's brother, got up from where he'd just sat down with a plate of food.

In her mind, he and Laurie both were more hers than that woman's, and that filled her with a lot of pride.

"I'll go talk to her," he grumbled.

The younger officer held up one hand in a calming manner, in a way Donna was sure he'd been trained to do to calm a crowd. "That won't be necessary," he said. "The complaint was anonymous. Nobody is filing any charges, but we're obligated to make an appearance. I'll make sure the report reflects the nature of the event, and there won't be any citations today."

"Well, that would be wonderful of you," she said, though she was pretty sure she was failing to make her smile as saccharine as she wanted to. She added, "Thank you, officers," and did her absolute best not to slam the door in their leering, staring faces.

***

Three weeks later, Donna really missed her husband for the first time. Sure, she had mourned his premature departure from this mortal plane. She had been cast in the role of a grieving widow, and played the part to a tee. His funeral had been a beautiful occasion. She went to visit his grave every week, on her way to or from church, and made sure to keep it tidy and presentable with fresh flowers.

It was hard to say how much of any of it really penetrated, though, and how much of it was her forward momentum continuing to propel her through her days.

Spring had come late. Their lawn had looked pristine right up until it didn't, and when the time came to mow it Donna had been positive it wouldn't be much of an issue. She could work on her tan while she whistled and bustled around the yard. She'd be done in an hour or two, and be sipping lemonade on her back porch by noon.

That had been the plan but the wretched machine had refused to start, which felt like such a hostile thing for it to do. It wasn't enough that she had to take care of this herself, no; the mower had to go out of its way to confound her.

That induced the first moment of genuine, stomach-wrenching longing, which surprised her. She had often pointed out to Ollie how much she did around the house, how Ollie took her for granted, and how many things were needed to keep a household like theirs running. Ollie, bless his soul, had ascribed to the 'happy wife, happy life' theory of marriage, and had not once in their entire marriage fought back.

It occurred to her for maybe the first time, as she stood there in the grass cursing at an inanimate object, that maybe it wasn't just her that kept the house running.

Donna stalked around the little green John Deere push mower, out on the front lawn where she'd walked it, and contemplated calling the handier of her sons, Peter. That would be tantamount to surrender, though, so she frowned and groused and poked at it like she had even the slightest idea what she was doing. The tips of her fingers were getting oily, which was not helping her mood.

"Hi Mrs. Lampanella!"

Donna and Ollie had moved into the neighborhood between the birth of Janet and Peter, in their early twenties, and they had been among their peers. Nearly every resident had been between twenty three and thirty three years of age, and a generation of kids grew up together. Since then, about half of the families had moved away, so after the initial crop of kids came a much more spread-out gaggle. The boy on the sidewalk behind her, standing astride his bike, was one of the followers. He was maybe fifteen. Donna couldn't remember his name, but she knew that his parents had moved into the old Silvestri house around the corner. Their names were...

"Hello, Mr. Payton!"

He smiled, seemingly excited to be remembered, and pointed at her mower. "I don't want to be here."

Donna quirked her head.

"My dad saw you futzing with that thing and he told me to come over here. He wants me to be mowing people's lawns to build character."

"But you don't want to," she said, looking down the street without turning.

The boy smiled. "I mean, not really, but I like money. Is your mower broke?"

"I'm sure I'll have it going in a minute," she said.

"Okay!" he said, brightly. "If my dad comes and asks, though, I gave you the whole spiel, okay?"

Donna tapped the side of her nose, and then pretended like she was scratching her cheek as he rode away. Watching the boy pedal gave her the excuse she needed to search further down the street, and sure enough she spotted the elder Payton trying very hard to look like he wasn't peeking over his fence. That made her bristle. The boy —Eddie? Maybe?— had been pleasant about it, but she resented his father's presumptiveness. She was going to fix it herself now, come hell or high water.

"Check the fuel shutoff valve," came a voice from behind her. "Ollie always shut it for winter so moisture didn't get into the fuel tank."

Donna whipped around and scowled.

Magda was walking to her car, shouting over the hedge that ran between their front yards. She slowed for a second, watching, but Donna wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of following her suggestion in front of her. After a moment, Magda laughed, sat in her car, and turned on the engine. Donna stared after her, fuming, and when Magda's car disappeared behind a corner she turned her attention back to the mower.

Fuel valve. What fuel valve. She shifted her anger towards Ollie, for making her feel helpless and ridiculous in front of the one person she never wanted to look helpless or ridiculous in front of. He should've known better. He should've left her written instructions, or a diagram, or...

She knew that was a bit much to ask for, him having gone so quickly, but he could have at least mentioned—

Just as she spotted the fuel line switch she remembered Ollie had mentioned something about it the previous autumn. Or maybe the year before that. She had laughed and shrugged it off at the time because mowing was Ollie's job: one of the few sorry things he did around the house, always making more of a show about doing his chores than actually achieving anything. Or so Donna had always thought. Once the valve was opened, the damn thing started right up.

Mowing improved her mood. Look at me, managing on my own! she thought, as she moved back and forth across their—no, her yard. She eyed the product of her effort lovingly. Neat, tidy, presentable, just as the Dayton Farms Homeowner Association recommended. She had met the standards in one more little thing. One more box checked on her list. Her life consisted of similar small achievements, and she had long ago become adept at deriving immense satisfaction from them.

Sometimes, in her head, she awarded herself a little gold star, and that always made her smile.

After mowing, she brewed some coffee and sat on the porch, eyeing her newly trimmed yard, but it was hard to look for any length of time without turning her gaze over to Magda's side. Magda had mowed her own lawn a few days earlier, but not diagonally like she was supposed to. The more Donna eyed her neat, diagonal lines to Maga's equally neat but horizontal ones, the more she fumed.

Magda did it out of spite, she was sure. The witch could not do a single thing that was expected of her. Always having to annoy others. Doing every little thing the wrong way. It annoyed her all over again that Magda had known more about her lawnmower than she did; that Ollie had discussed it with her. She knew that Ollie had been on much friendlier terms with their neighbor than she was, but to be reminded of that annoyed her even more. And how had that devious wench repaid Ollie's friendliness? By calling in a noise complaint to his wake?

She caught herself grumbling under her breath, and that hit her like a bolt. Grumbling under her breath was a bad habit Ollie had always tried to help her with. He always said 'instead of complaining, just go do the thing.'

"Oh, I'll go do the thing," she grumbled.

Donna's eyes fixed on the maple tree that grew on Magda's side right next to their property line. The branches stretched over to their—her yard, right over the spot in front of her garage where she liked to park her car. It was just one more example of the total ruthlessness the woman had: they had asked Magda to trim it back many times, and yet she did nothing. Ollie had fretted over the leaves falling on their side just last autumn, when he was once again raking them, and it looked like it was about to drop its crop of helicopter seeds again which meant that her driveway was going to look terrible until she got out the pressure washer.

Donna eyed the branches evaluatively. She was sure she could reach most of them with Ollie's branch cutter, and if she backed Ollie's pickup truck out of the garage and stood on the bed of it...

An hour later she stepped back, wiping her forehead and watching the fruits of her labor with a mixture of delight and horror. She had butchered the tree, leaving it completely lopsided. She'd gotten angrier and more daring as she worked, in a spiralling frenzy, and had cut every single branch as close to the property line as she could manage so that it looked like the tree had grown into an invisible wall. A terrific little thrill shivered through her body. She had overdone it, cutting way more than was necessary, but there was no taking it back.

Ollie would have stopped her. Maybe Ollie was the only one who could have. As she stood there, staring at the product of her rage, she wished that he had. She wished he was there right that moment. But he wasn't. That was when she had her second moment of truly missing her husband.

***

Donna's third moment of missing her husband happened later that week.

She'd had trouble sleeping since he passed, the bed feeling too big and too empty, and her sleep schedule had gotten way off. She'd sleep late in the morning after staying up late, because what was the reason to get up early when she wasn't joining Ollie for breakfast, and then she wouldn't want to sleep until a little later each night. She wasn't really tired, but it was dark and the clock said it was an ungodly hour of the morning so the rules said she should be in bed. She tossed and turned, kicking the covers off, then pulling them on again. It was a bit too hot with them and a bit too cold without them. She wondered if that's what menopause would feel like, which made her feel very old. Very old, and very alone, and that was when it hit her.

Earlier in the evening, she had gone to her monthly book club. They had only met once since Ollie had passed, and she had anticipated that they would, as a group, still be sympathetic and supportive. She had been wrong, because Ellie had just gotten a diagnosis of cervical cancer and the whole rest of the meeting revolved around her. It was justified, of course; Ellie was a lovely woman and any kind of cancer diagnosis was serious, but between that and listening to all the others complain about their husbands never taking any gynecological ailments seriously, the whole affair had left her in a very foul mood. She wasn't exactly sure why it was so foul, but foul it was.

Years earlier, one of their other neighbors, two doors down from Magda, had gradually dropped out of all their social engagements after her husband had died, and she'd finally moved away... Donna couldn't say when. She hadn't thought about...

Donna groaned, because she couldn't even remember the woman's name anymore. Christina would know; she'd been friends with the oldest daughter. Penny, maybe? Or was Penny the mom? She'd have to call Chrissy in the morning and ask.

Donna hadn't thought about that woman in years, but now Donna wondered if she had just withdrawn, like Donna had thought at the time, or if she'd been slowly pushed out: her isolation and frustration marginalized by the trivial goings on in the lives of everyone around her. And, ultimately, if the same would happen to Donna.

She had thought about relocating. She would have loved to live closer to her children, especially now that Chrissy had finally gotten to it and given her a grandchild. She was sure she could have been of great help, being so proficient in running a household and all. To her amazement, each of her kids brushed off the suggestion that they needed her every time she ventured there.

From kids and grandkids her thoughts wandered once again to Ollie. She squirmed in her huge, lonely bed, wondering what it was that bothered her, but she didn't figure it out until she got so hot that she removed her nightgown to lay naked on the sheets.