Sid’s father died at age fifty-seven after shoveling frozen wet snow from his buried car in order to get to a job he hated, only to find that he had dug out his neighbor’s look-alike car instead. The heart attack was massive and, due to clogged, storm-blocked roads, the ambulance could not get to Sid’s dad in time. Suddenly Sid was alone, for his mother had died in childbirth. His father had never really recovered from the shock of her passing away while their love was still so fresh and fervent, and in many ways his dad’s trauma colored both of their lives in a faded sepia.
Sid adored his dad, but, without a doubt, the man’s taste in interior decoration was tarnished by excess. Not only had his dad kept his mother’s crowded childhood collection of ceramic ponies, he had added framed photos and kitschy paintings of ponies as some sort of sad aesthetic tribute to the woman he had loved. Sid longed for clean lines, empty surfaces, and visual serenity.
He organized a big garage sale, one sunny Saturday, lining the length of his driveway with tables covered in his parents’ pony-themed knick-knacks, garish home decorations, nostalgic but outdated kitchen tools dating back to when his mother was alive, and his dad’s clothes. Which is how he met Lucille. She was passing his house on her way home from the supermarket and stopped at his sale. She checked out the clothes rack, but saw that it was all out-of-date men’s suits. She looked at the pony collections, but they weren’t her style. In the end, she fell in love with two ornate gold picture frames, but she was too loaded down with grocery bags to carry these heavy treasures home as well. He agreed to deliver them once the sale weekend was over. On a bright Post-It, he wrote SOLD along with her address and placed it on one of the frames. “I’ll drop by after dinnertime tomorrow. Just wear a mask, okay?” He was used to being especially careful because of living with his father.
When he handed over the frames at Lucille’s place later the next day, she said. “All that stuff you were getting rid of, did one of your parents die? I ask you because my parents both passed away from Covid. That’s why I’ve been looking for frames.” She pointed to a wall above a small upright piano. “Now that I’m an orphan, I want to hang their photos there.”
The word ‘orphan’ ricocheted around his head for a minute, distracting him.
“You okay?” Lucille asked.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that you used the term ‘orphan.’ I hadn’t realized it before, hadn’t thought in those terms. Yes, me too. And yes, that’s why I had the garage sale. Starting fresh.”
“Your parents both just died?”
“It was my dad – last month. Heart attack. He’s the one who raised me. My mother? She passed when I was an infant. So, yeah, I guess that means I’m also a member of the Orphans Club.” He shifted from foot to foot on the walkway in front of her door, digesting the concept.
“It’s not just sad,” she said, “it’s liberating too. You can do what you want when you want – well as long as you can afford it.”
Sid nodded. What she said didn’t have much meaning to him. He was devastated over his dad’s death. Liberating? No, he felt he was in a prison of mourning and loneliness.
“I know you feel the opposite now,” – how did she know? but she was right. “It’s been about a year for me, and time has dragged. Really dragged.”
Once again this stranger was describing an unexpectedly similar feeling to his own. Time had definitely become sluggish without his dad. He was used to working from home and to staying isolated because of the pandemic. But now he had no one to cook for, no one to care for, not even anyone he could play a game of Pick-Up Sticks with, as he had done with his dad each lunch hour – at least on the days when his father was up for it.
“I came home to spend the pandemic with him. Didn’t want him to be alone. I thought I would only be here a month or two.” Sid felt he had said enough. “Okay, enjoy the frames. I’ll get going.” He handed her his card – “In case you have any problems with them.”
Lucille leaned forward in her doorway, her arms opening as if for a hug. He backed away. He hadn’t hugged anyone but his dad for nearly two years. He headed back down the walkway to his car and turned around to wave. She had removed her mask. She was beautiful. Inside his car, he took off his own mask and saw she was still smiling and waving. He felt a bit creeped-out by his sense of excitement in this time of loss. It almost made him angry.
+ + + + +
A few days later, when he heard the letters and magazines clatter through the mail slot, Sid went to gather the mail. The sympathy cards were still arriving. Since his dad died there had been a daily smattering of cards, often with scribbled memories full of affection. Reading these new anecdotes kept the wound fresh, even as they warmed his heart.
That day there was a sparkly envelope among the other stuff. He figured it was another one of his dad’s friends – he had been popular with the ladies. He put the pile on the coffee table and went back to his desk. But something nagged at him. Glitter and a sympathy card didn’t seem to go together. He went back to see who it was from, but there was no return address. He slid open the flap and inside was a handwritten note from Lucille.
“How about we each do a home test Saturday afternoon and then you come over for dinner?”
He put her note to the side and finished his day. That night at 6:30, when he was loading the dishwasher, she called and repeated her invite.
“No. Thanks, but no.”
“Is there a reason?”
“That’s not something I’ve been doing.”
“But probably in order to protect your dad, right?”
He stopped to think. “Actually, yes.”
“Then you no longer have a reason to stay home. It’s settled. You’ll drop by. But do you have a Covid test you can use?”
“My dad stockpiled them. I have plenty.”
“Great! Bring dessert.”
+ + + + +
On Saturday they each tested negative. He picked up a half-dozen cupcakes curbside from Cupcakalicious Bakery. She had set the dining room table with obvious care. There were a dozen candles lit around the room. He was well aware that she had seduction on her mind – the low-cut blouse would have been a sufficient message without the atmospheric setting – but she was a stranger. So far all they had in common was a matching set of dead parents.
As the evening progressed, though, he warmed to the situation. After dinner and before dessert, she picked up her bong from the credenza, and raised her eyebrows in a question. When he smiled and nodded, she settled next to him on the couch to make it easier to indulge together in a couple of hits. At first they shared stories about their late parents. Lucille had been her daddy’s little girl. He had been a cuddler and a hugger. As for her mother, Lucille had deeply admired the woman. “She was so good-looking and so sophisticated that my dad and I were almost afraid to approach her. Turned out that her ancestry was mostly Native American. She had never mentioned it until I asked her about her hair, about her long braids.” Lucille seemed to drift off for a moment, perhaps picturing her mother. She continued, “She was so different from my dad. No gushing, really, but lots of sharing. She knew how to do so many things. She taught me to weave and to garden and to bake bread.” Lucille took a hankie from her pocket and wiped her eyes, raising them to his gaze. “I’m so sorry you never knew a mother’s love, Sid.”
And so their affair began. He found that their joyous sexual romps took his mind off his sense of abandonment. Sid loved hearing about her home life growing up. She told him, “Even when I was a teenager, Mother supported me making my own decisions. She was brave, because I was pretty wild in those days.” Sid could relate. His dad, too, had always given him as much rope as he needed, always treated him like a peer. He fantasized that his sweet, gallant dad and her alluring mom would have been the perfect match.
One time as she was preparing dinner she said, “Funny how both of us lost our mothers first, but both our dads stepped up to raise us. My dad pampered my mother all through her fight with cancer and right to the end. I learned to admire him even more.”
Sid was confused. “Didn’t you tell me they both died of Covid? Last year?”
She was tossing the salad and didn’t look up. “I guess I didn’t mention how she fought cancer for many years – and was too sick to be much of a parent. Then Covid killed her off – and just a few weeks later took my dad. Sorry I wasn’t clear. It’s hard for me to think of those many years she was in pain.” As tears filled her eyes, Sid embraced her, saying, “That’s a lot for anyone to handle.”
They formed their own pandemic pod – talking every morning before breakfast and then Facetiming every night from their respective beds. She told him how shocked she had been to find out that her parents had significant debts when she had expected savings. He talked about his own father’s so-called collections: “It was more like hoarding,” Sid said.
Weekends the lovers spent together, alternating between their homes. She pampered him with pancakes and omelets in the mornings – no woman had ever done that for him. She sewed on the dangling button of his blue jacket. Usually he had such things done by the dry cleaners. A believer in the proposition that people should contribute in line with their resources, he always paid for the take-out dinners they’d order. It had been her idea. “We can support neighborhood restaurants and we can try things we’ve never eaten before.” She loved the Turkish stuffed eggplant, the vegan fry-up, the Vietnamese beef dish, the bagels, lox, and cream cheese. He supplied the wine and built a tradition of bringing a half-dozen cupcakes. He delighted in treating her. After one expensive prime rib dinner, she told him that his generosity reminded her of her late father’s big heart. Knowing how she had felt about her dad, Sid was moved.
Sid felt the relationship was tugging him toward a more generous, more sensitive way of life. One night the fitted sheet on her bed ripped, and she was embarrassed not to have a replacement. The next day he bought her an expensive new set, along with a goose down duvet and two down pillows. He had the shop include a note that said “Happy Three-Month Anniversary of the Orphans Club.” She lavished him with gratitude.
When he found her tearful the following week, it took some effort to pry out the problem. “When my parents died, I couldn’t cope so I just put all of their possessions into a storage unit. I didn’t think $200 a month was going to be too much for me.” She was in arrears by over seven months, so they would not let her access the unit. “I guess I should’ve just sold it all right away, like you did.”
“Just give me the invoice,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. She searched in her desk drawer, but could not find it. She looked in the big basket near her front door where she tossed her odds and ends. It wasn’t there.
“I may,” she said with a shy smile, “have torn the thing up in a fit of frustration.”
“Do you remember how much it was for?”
“It’s seared into my brain. It was $1,400.”
Later, without making an issue of it, he wrote out a check to her for the whole sum and left it on her desk.
Meanwhile, the frames she had bought at his yard sale leaned against the wall in her hall closet, literally gathering dust. He wondered if her money problems were stopping her from using them for portraits of her parents, her original intention. He had no idea how she was supporting herself. But he was too content with their connection to pry. He never pressured her to reveal more than she wanted.
Until that Sunday morning when there was an urgent knock at her door. “Who could that be?” Lucille asked, turning towards him in the bed. It was the middle of a pandemic – people didn’t just drop by. They both jumped up. She tied a robe around her tightly and he slipped on his jeans and shirt. They both grabbed their masks. He stood behind her as she opened the door.
“Surprise!” yelled the unmasked middle-aged woman at the door, short tufts of grey hair sprouting from under a frayed hat, her square body concealed within a stained trench coat.
Lucille stepped backwards, while Sid scooted out of her way. He couldn’t see Lucille’s face through the mask, but her body language was clear. She did not want this person at her door.
“Lucy, baby, give your mother a hug.”
“What are you doing here?” Lucille hissed. Sid looked from one woman to the other.
“What am I doing here? Wanting to see my kid. You’ve had me shut up at Sweet Pine for more than a year. No visit. No nothing.” Sid heard an edge to this woman’s voice that sounded strangely like Lucille’s when she was pissed off.
“They don’t allow visits. It’s a pandemic. Covid, remember? And anyway, how did you get out?”
“I walked out. I thought of my poor little girl deprived of her mother’s company –and, well I escaped.”
Sid was puzzled. He looked from the scruffy woman – her face blotched by a fury hidden behind her smile – to his own Lucille, clenching her jaw in a scowl. If this was a random stranger, why wasn’t Lucille denying it was her mother? If this was, in fact, her mother, how could he make sense of the last three months? Confused and distressed, Sid felt the solace he’d found with Lucille evaporating into the ether of deceit. He went to the bedroom and gathered his jacket and phone and charger and wallet.
He could hear the women’s conversation.
“I’m sending you back in a taxi this minute.”
“No, you’re not. They said I can’t stay there until my bill’s paid. You haven’t paid them since that guy Fred, or was it Ted, walked out on you.”
“I’ve got money at the moment. I’ll work it out with them. But you get the hell out of here, Ma.”
Sid had heard more than enough. He returned to the entryway, hoping to slide out.
“And who is this nice gentleman? Can you help me with my bag, young man?” The old woman moved sideways, revealing a small suitcase bound up in tattered rope.
“Sorry,” Sid mumbled. “I was just leaving.”
“Sid! Wait! I can explain.”
“Oh Lucy, no!” the pale older woman said, “have you suckered in another bereaved sugar daddy with your stupid ‘poor orphan’ story? Wait till your father hears about this!”
Sid ignored the women and jumped into his car as quickly as possible. A block away, he suddenly pulled over and covered his face with his hands. How did this happen? He wasn’t sure he could bear another emotional thrashing on top of the death of his father. To think how intimate he had become with Lucille, after all that time isolating with his dad. Had his human radar become so eroded that he completely overlooked her painful treachery? He ran his memory backwards – the picture frames, the Orphans Club, the neediness; and then there were the meals she had cooked for him, her affectionate caresses, their sexual connection. She had toyed with him just when he was most vulnerable. Her lies, her betrayal, now doubled his sense of loss, but what made him weep was recalling that he had left his Pick-Up Sticks in Lucille’s odds-and-ends basket.
- The Orphans Club - June 8, 2022