M A K I N G    A L L O W A N C E S     2,355 words

   ‘Hey lady,’ said the mechanic. ‘You know you got a couple boxes of avocados in yo’ trunk?’

   Hell and damnation -- she’d totally forgotten! Elsie stood there, in the relative cool of the garage, glumly surveying them. Two days ago she’d promised to deliver them to LaRue’s in time for her neighborhood block party. They were good and ripe now, too. Not past it yet, but in this heat, if you didn’t use ‘em quick, they wouldn’t be fit for anything, not even guacamole.

   ‘You wan’ me to put ‘em in the loaner for you?’ asked the man.

   Elsie had half a mind to tell him no, to take them home and share them with his neighbors. But she couldn’t do that:  LaRue needed the avocados, that block party would start early tomorrow morning and she’d said she was going to make a load of guacamole.

LaRue had told her about the block party a few days ago, asked if she could spare some avocados. Elsie had offered her enough to feed the neighborhood. This was no big deal: this year the three trees in her backyard had produced more than her small family could possibly eat and she still had plenty left over to give her own neighbors. When LaRue had called and said that her car was acting up again, so she couldn’t come and collect them, she’d dumped them all in a box and loaded them into her trunk. Delivering them was no big deal for Elsie – didn’t she deliver groceries two times a week already?

But then this morning, she’d gone and forgotten all about them. And now here she was with a two boxes of fast-ripening avocados.

   Back on the freeway, the avocados weighed on her mind. It’d been a long day. Delivering groceries for Lacey, who’d begged off her usual route because of an aerobics class. An aerobics class for God’s sake. Here I am, thought Elsie, no time for anything like an aerobics class, what with a mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s and a sister who’s bedridden – and Lacey says can I do her run for her please, she’s got an aerobics class. Why didn’t I just remind her about Trina and Valerie? she thought. She knows about them. She knows I can’t just run off and leave Trina and Valerie without a little notice!

   Oh well, Lacey had her problems too. Maybe the aerobics class would help her let off steam. You never knew what was going on in people’s lives, after all, the crosses they had to bear. And you had to hand it to Lacey, too – she’d been delivering Mrs Wall’s groceries for the past year now and she’d hardly ever complained.  

   Elsie had shown up at Mrs Wall’s that afternoon in 104 degree heat, the air-conditioning in her car unequal to the challenge of mid-summer California heat. With her dress plastered to her back, she’d lugged the old lady’s groceries up the steps and waited there, sweating, until, from the depths of her dark, air-conditioned house, Mrs Wall had grimaced and scowled and hip-hitched her way to the door, clutching her Zimmer frame like grim death and wanting to know who she was and what the blue blazes she was doing, bothering her at this hour. As if 1:00 in the afternoon was 4:00 in the morning!

   Not a thank-you, not a smile, not a My-it’s-a-hot-day –  and forget about a glass of

water! In fact, Mrs Wall hadn’t even let her in to the house while she went to fetch her purse. Saw her every Sunday morning, didn’t she? Wednesday evening Bible meetings, too! But when Elsie had presented the receipt, Mrs Wall had queried each and every item:  What was the $3.85 for? Velveeta cheese? Had she ordered that? Well, was it in the bag? She hadn’t seen it in the bag!  And so on about every single thing. Finally Mrs Wall had counted out her quarters, nickels and pennies with such

fussy care that Elsie was honestly embarrassed for her.

   But the worst had been when she was turning to leave. Mrs Wall was one of those poor souls who say things they don’t really know they’re saying –  things they’re thinking, but surely wouldn’t say if they could help it. Elsie had been half the way down the steps to her car when she heard it, loud and clear, cracking through the summer air like a gunshot.

  To think in this day and age that you still heard that word as much as you did! And here she’d been going to the same church Mrs Wall went to for –  what? –  twelve years now?

  Elsie had heard the word – that word – from Mrs Wall – and the temptation to turn back in anger had been great. She’d walked back to her car filled with rage, but once she’d gotten herself buckled up and cranked down the window, the bitterness just fizzled up inside her and evaporated into something else:  pity – and gratitude. Thank God that she herself, with all her trials, with all her faults, wasn’t that close-minded! God help her from having a heart that barren and dry and bitter, like a tough old gourd! Or an affliction that let you say the hateful things you were thinking, whether you wanted to say them or not. She’d turned the key in the ignition and headed off for the garage, leaving Mrs Wall behind with her ungrateful heart and her bad hip and her bag of groceries to put away all by herself. ‘I coulda helped her with that bag if she’d of let me,’ thought Elsie. ‘Saved her a whole lot of huffing and puffing.’

   And now she had to go all out of her way just to unload those avocados. In this heat, and in rush-hour traffic. She should never have volunteered to take them in the first place! Everybody was expecting her back at 4:00.  Bonnie, her next-door neighbour who came and sat with Trina and Valerie, would be wanting to get back to her own family, fix dinner for them. She was good to come over and help out, but Elsie didn’t want to impose on her too much.

  Hell’s bells! All she wanted was a shower and a cold beer and here she was toting avocados clear across the valley.

   Crawling along in rush-hour traffic, Elsie dug her mobile out of her bag and quickly punched in her home number. Busy – damn. Valerie, she’d be on the phone to her friends. Elsie sighed and punched in Michael’s number, anxiously watching the road. But his mobile wasn’t switched on. He’d be on the way to her house, she thought, smiling.

   Michael was good to her. It wasn’t easy, given her situation. When her husband had died, his mother had already lived with them for fifteen years and there’d been no other family for her to go to. Anyway, Elsie liked Trina: she had Alzheimer’s, sure, but she’d always been like a mother to Elsie. Trina was still good company too. In the distant future, Trina might have to go into a home, Elsie knew that. But until she absolutely had to go, Elsie didn’t mind taking care of her, not one bit. The same thing for Valerie, her sister, who had multiple sclerosis. Okay, it wasn’t always a picnic, but the one thing she could say about her family was that they all got along. How many people could say that nowadays with all the fussing and fighting and alimony-this and custody-that?

   A lot of men, Elsie knew, might object to a situation like hers, but Michael had been really good to Trina and Valerie right from the start, had never complained  about the inconvenience of her household arrangements. She was lucky, there was no doubt about it. A good man like Michael, a good neighbour like Bonnie, a sister who loved her, and a mother-in-law who’d always been more like a mother and a friend.  No doubt about it, there were lots of people didn’t have it anywhere near as good as she did. Look at poor old Mrs Wall!  Left all by herself like that, spitting hatred at the very people who came to help her!

   By the time Elsie made it to LaRue’s house, her shoulder was killing her from shifting gears in rush hour traffic. Thinking only of the heat and her shoulder and the avocados, she was about to climb out of the car when she did a double take. Surely that was Michael’s car parked there in LaRue’s driveway? How many sky blue ‘79 Datsuns in virtually mint condition did you see on the road these days, after all? She looked at the license plate and sure enough, it was his. But what in the world was he doing here at LaRue’s?

   Suddenly, in a warm, sickening rush, a suspicion entered Elsie’s mind, but she dismissed it immediately. Only to have it leak in again, almost hurting her in its awfulness. She remembered the conversation she and LaRue’d been having on the day she’d offered her the avocados. Something LaRue’d said to Michael, and then the way he’d responded, too:  a look, a laugh, a certain tone in their voices. Something in her at the time had straightened up and said ‘Hey!’ but she’d barely acknowledged it. Well, now that same something was rapping her hard on the shoulder and saying, ‘See? See?’

    Her movements slow and wooden, Elsie punched in LaRue’s number on her mobile. And sat waiting while the phone rang and rang. Finally, a woman’s husky voice answered: LaRue. In the background, she heard a man’s voice calling out. Michael.  ‘LaRue?’ she heard herself say.  She could almost feel LaRue straightening up.

   ‘Hey, Elsie!’  The false gaiety in LaRue’s voice made her want to cry.

   ‘Yeah, LaRue –  I was just wondering – have you seen Michael? ‘Cause he was supposed to go home and I’ve phoned and, well – he’s not there yet.’

In the merest pause that followed, she could almost hear a lie forming in LaRue’s

mind. No, she said, she had not seen Michael, had no idea where he might be. Maybe he was on his way home this very minute, she said.

   Elsie hung up the phone, put the key back in the ignition with shaking fingers, and drove off.

   She drove two, three blocks, stopped the car and burst into tears. It felt good. Awful, but good. She cried until her eyes were swollen and tight, until she could barely breathe out of her nose. Until some of the pressure in her heart was released and she felt she was no longer a danger to others on the road. Then she started up the car again and headed home.

   Halfway to LaPuente, Elsie remembered the avocados. She swore quietly and took a deep breath. Let them rot, she thought. Who gives a damn?  Three minutes later, though, she heaved a sigh and got off at the next exit. She hadn’t grown up poor for nothing. You didn’t waste food. Your man might be two-timing you with one of your friends, you might be tired and hot and freshly dissed by someone you’d gone out of your way to try and help, but dammit, you didn’t waste food.

    It took her twenty minutes out of her way, but as she left the Good Shepherd’s parking lot, Elsie took some comfort in the thought of how nutritious avocados are, how homeless people in particular needed the extra vitamins and minerals. ‘Ooh, looks like guacamole tonight!’ the volunteers there had enthused.

   Michael, the sweet-talking, two-timing snake! LaRue, her so-called friend! Who’d advised her not to take up with Michael in the first place – he was too good looking, she’d claimed. Better to go for a plainer man, one who wouldn’t have all the girls after him. And she should know, after all –

   Elsie frowned. A sudden memory of LaRue’s tearful face, her body heaving with sobs. Six years she’d been with that stuck-up, mean, cheating, lying waste of space, staunchly defending him, pretending ignorance of his every fault, his every affair – and there’d been plenty, too. And then he’d gone and left her. Any sensible woman would’ve yelled ‘Hallelujah!’, but LaRue just wanted him back.                                   

   Elsie sighed. LaRue didn’t have the confidence in herself that a lot of women had, never trusted her ability to hold a man. She was smart, she was funny, she was tough – but her confidence level with men was close to zero. So she’d stuck to her Johnnie, propped him up, covered for him, loved him, acted proud of him. Johnnie’d had no business leaving her like that; it’d knocked out her tiny bit of pride in herself. To Elsie she had confided how useless she felt, how unloved and unlovable.

   And Michael – well, Michael just loved the ladies. It wasn’t like he’d ever tried to hide it! She’d told him about LaRue, too. How sorry for her she felt, what a shame it was she’d never had a decent man. It’d probably been just too much temptation for him – playing the comforter, getting all that affection and gratitude from a love-starved woman. Men were weak that way, it was a known fact.  She’d have to straighten him out, no doubt about it. It couldn’t go on, this thing with LaRue, but men were weak, even good ones like Michael. Always strutting around, full of the notion they were the stronger sex but in reality weak as newborn kittens!

   Smiling a little to herself, Elsie turned right onto Francescita. Almost home. Her mind turned to thoughts of a cold beer, a shower, a change of clothes:  cool, clean cotton. Humming to herself, she wondered how many onions she had left, whether she’d remembered to take that frozen hamburger out of the freezer or not.