Endings: Short Stories

By A.H. McCallister

There is no available information at this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 10, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465332295

A.H. McCallister

A.H. McCallister was born and grew up in Hollywood in the motion picture business. Her mother, Eleanor Avery Hempstead, was a timber heiress. Her father, David Hempstead, was a once famous film producer whose credits include "None but the Lonely Heart," "Kitty Foyle," "Joan of Paris," and "Portrait of Jennie." She has lived in New York, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Palm Springs, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Palma de Mallorca, Madrid, Rome, London, and the south of France. She began to write in 1944, and currently writes either in New York or Santa Fe.

Book preview

Copyright © 2003 by A.H. McCallister.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

Contents

ENDINGS

THE PURPLE CANDLE

THREE BLUE BALLS

MIXED BAG

THE DEATH OF ARTHUR MANNING

THE APRICOT TREE

UNDER THE BLOSSOM THAT HANGS FROM THE BOUGH

SCHADENFREUD AND GLUCKSMERTZ

PLAYING DOLLS

VALENTINE’S DAY

ENDNOTES

ENDINGS

She limps towards me, the old woman, dragging her left foot. One shoulder angles away from her body, lifting it higher than the other shoulder, giving the impression that her back is hunched. She is thinner than when I saw her last, down to the bone now. Look! There is a smile breaking on her face. It is different from her other smiles—different from any smile with which she has presented me during the many years we have been locked together in this uneasy relationship that was defined for us from the beginning.

She is, for the first time, glad to see me.

Her companion who has answered the door smiles, too, but only with her mouth, only when she thinks it is expected of her. The companion wears a uniform of cheerful pink that is several sizes too large for her. She stands aside as the old woman approaches, limps past her, reaches out for me. I put my hands under her elbows, distancing her, and she makes me a gift of her weight. We kiss-kiss in the air, on the side of a cheek. We do not linger.

I follow her into the room, making conversation. She offers me a drink. I insist upon making the drink myself. She eases herself onto the sofa, declining to join me. She is permitted only one drink a day, and prefers to wait until we go to the restaurant.

I peer into the liquor cabinet which stands against a wall just inside the dining room. There is a bottle of vodka at the front of the cabinet. It is an inferior brand. I hesitate. She frowns.

What’s the matter?

I can’t drink the cheap stuff, I reply.

She rises painfully from the sofa, bracing herself on its arm.

I have other things, she says, reaching out towards me with her free hand. ‘You don’t have to have that. There’s more in the back."

‘Don’t bother, I say. Don’t got to any trouble. I can drink something else. Have you any decent wine?"

It’s no trouble, she assures me, hurrying into the pantry behind the dining room, mindless of her crippled leg.

She returns with a bottle of exceptional quality. A gift, perhaps? She will drink the cheap stuff herself, sharing it with her old friend, Minnie Frances, at another time. In the past, she would not have offered me her good liquor. She would have saved it for special friends. Minnie Frances is a special friend, but she is poor and lives humbly, can not reciprocate, so the cheap stuff is good enough for her, too. She was always mean with money, this old woman. It is not that she has grown more generous as she nears death, but that, for the first time, she has deemed me deserving of her best.

I smile and take the bottle from her hand, pour myself a generous drink. She has provided me with a fresh lemon. I pare a generous slice of the lemon’s skin and twist it, letting it fall, scenting the air, among the ice cubes rising from the colorless liquor. Glass in hand, I return to the living room. I approach my usual chair until I notice that the cat, Cleopatra, is curled into her blanket on the back of that chair, staring at me with clouded green eyes. How many times has the old woman reminded me that this is Cleopatra’s chair? Cleopatra is a member of the household and I, an outsider.

Why don’t you sit down? she says, noticing my hesitation.

I don’t think Cleopatra wants me to sit there, I answer.

Oh, don’t pay any attention to her. She knows you. She doesn’t care if you sit there.

I seat myself. The cat, tossing me a baleful glance, springs off the back of the chair and disappears into the dining room.

She’ll be back, the old woman says. She just wants to be coaxed. Pain crosses her face, playing with her features as though they were toys. She closes her eyes, puts her old hands—hands ringed with dirty diamonds—on either side of her, pressing them into the sofa.

What’s wrong?

Dizzy. She rests her tired, old woman’s head against the back of the sofa.

Are you all right? I ask.

Better, she says. Not right, but a little better. Coughing, she sits bolt upright and looks around the room.

Cleo! she calls suddenly. Cleo, where are you?

She won’t come unless she feels like it.

She’ll come. She comes when I call her. Cleo! Cleo! Come here, Cleo. Her voice trails off into a coughing fit. Her damaged lungs gulp hungrily for air.

The cat, Cleopatra, does not make an appearance. Instead, another cat, fat, with rolls of marmalade fur and a milky white mustache strolls in from one of the bedrooms and looks around him guardedly.

Tony! cries the old woman with delight. She stops, takes a few shallow breaths, continues in a voice more subdued than the first voice. Come here, Tony. You’ve always liked Tony, she says to me.

The cat, Cleopatra’s counterpart, steals over to my chair and throws himself on his back, pawing the air with white milk paws that match his mustache. I lean down and massage his stomach. Gratified, he purrs.

Tony likes you, she says approvingly.

It is entirely a new thing, this approval. I find it oddly unnerving, and take a large sip of my drink to steady myself. She drinks sparkling water with a dash of aperitif.

So, she says. Your trip was not a success?

A disaster. I guess I didn’t know the woman well enough.

What woman? she asks.

The woman who went with me, of course. The woman from Rancho Mirage. I told you.

Her eyes narrow craftily. I know Rancho Mirage. I’ve been there. Rancho Mirage is not the news of the week to me.

Nor to me, I answer. That’s where she lives. The woman who went with me on the trip. My traveling companion. I met her when I had the place in Palm Desert.

Her face clears. Oh, she says. That woman.

Yes.

Difficult? she murmurs sympathetically.

Impossible. Here! I reach into my handbag and take out an envelope from which I withdraw a photograph of myself and my travelling companion, Rosalie Winters—the woman from Rancho Mirage.

Seventies?

Seventy-five, I think.

She must have had a lot of face work.

Yes. They do a lot of that there. Not the best work. I look at my watch. It’s nearly seven. Shouldn’t we be getting on to the restaurant?

But there is no reply. She has fallen back against the sofa cushions. Her eyes are closed, dark circles bruising the folds of skin that lie beneath them. Little, laboured puffs of breath issue from deep inside her. Each puff is shorter than the last.

I don’t think I can make it, she manages at last. You’d better cancel the reservation.

I spring from Cleopatra’s chair, go over and sit beside her on the couch. I take her wrist in my hand, put my other hand on her forehead. Her forehead is feverish. I can’t seem to find a pulse.

Janvier! I call out. Janvier!

The companion appears at the dining room door in her loose, pink uniform.

Try to get her into the bedroom. I’m going to call the doctor.

Janvier moves slowly in our direction. Her coffee-colored face is expressionless. She is thinking that she will be out of a job soon—thinking what an inconvenience it will be if this old woman dies on her, right now, right here in this room. Janvier is from Haiti, hence the exotic name. It is the only thing exotic about her, her name.

Hurry up! I cry. Hurry up!

Janvier moves a little faster, but not much.

The old woman lies in the sofa cushions. Her wrist flexes in my hand. She murmurs something, but her voice is barely audible. I can’t hear what she is saying. I cock my head to one side and lower it until my ear grazes her lips.

I don’t want her, she whispers. Send her away.

I have to call the doctor. But I’ll come with you. I’ll call him from your room.

I don’t need a doctor, she replies more audibly.

I press my fingers deeper into her wrist. I feel the faint flutter of her pulse, caged beneath the blue veins. But her forehead is flushed, full of heat still.

I think you need a doctor.

No. She shakes her head. "Just take me to my