Knock

Abstract

Knock Kathryn Kulpa (bio) Knock I think of him in black and white. In a postwar world still clearing away its rubble, not quite ready to step into glorious Technicolor. I think of him knockingly, if knockingly is the word I want. If it's a word at all. He is the one who knocks. There's a black leather briefcase in the back seat of his car. There's a white possum foot hanging from the rearview mirror. For luck? It wasn't lucky for that possum. His sharp, questing chin. His foot in your door. All he needs is a moment of your time. All he needs is a chance. Jerk Here's one thing I know: when you were sixteen, you worked at a drugstore soda fountain. Back when drugstores had soda fountains. Pop Tate. And Archie, Betty, and Veronica sipping ice cream sodas through candy-striped paper straws. You were a soda jerk. Isn't that what they called them then? Was there a female version? A jerkette? Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. You learned to read the flavors in customers' eyes, knew which antsy, love-starved teenagers would choose chocolate, which resigned, tired-eyed mothers would settle for vanilla, which cheek-pinching old men would ask for strawberry, extra syrup, Make it sweet like you! And then he threw you by asking for pistachio. There wasn't even a syrup for it, but you made it for him just the same, watched the chartreuse ice cream curling up against the frosty metal scoop. I once had shoes that color, you said. I have—right this very now—a car that color, he said. [End Page 261] You imagined that car, parked outside, startling the sensible black Fords and tan Studebakers of Tiogue Avenue with its pale-green glamour, like a visiting luna moth. But he didn't offer, yet, to take you for a ride. He knew the power of the pause. Hat Trick It was a time when men wore hats. He wore one too. Pick the hat out of a hat. Stetson, homburg, panama, porkpie. A sharp hat for a sharp dresser. A flat sateen ribbon around the brim; a small, bent feather. On the inside of the sweat-stained lining, a two-inch business card tucked into a slit. LIKE HELL IT'S YOURS! PUT IT BACK! THIS HAT BELONGS TO______. He'd never filled it in. Not a man who feared hat thieves. Or maybe he'd stolen it himself, from some other man feckless enough to leave his hat unlabeled. Maybe he'd stolen more than a hat. But you wouldn't have known that then. Buckle At the wedding you didn't wear white because it was a second wedding—not yours, but his. At the county courthouse in Laconia, New Hampshire. You wore a chartreuse shantung suit and shoes dyed to match, silk chartreuse shoes with patent leather buckles. You would have forgiven him a lot when he bought you those shoes. They were going places, those shoes. They were the kind of shoes that could only walk in one direction, up. One, two, buckle my shoe. You used to jump rope to that rhyme. Not so long before. Age of bride: seventeen. His shoes didn't have buckles, but his belt did. The belt was snakeskin leather and the buckle solid brass, rounded just enough that when it left a mark on your skin it looked almost like a smile. Manicure You didn't ask about the sales trips to Canada or the business calls made out of a series of phone booths or the identical black briefcases stacked in the linen closet. Those weren't things you needed to know about. He [End Page 262] bought you a white fox fur. He bought you a dishwasher. No dishpan hands for my girl, he said. He enclosed your hands in his, planted a kiss on your pretty palm. In later years your hands would be sharp and knobby, every bone its own defined ridge, but at this point they were still soft as a child's hands. Your lifeline—long, curving almost into the wrist. Your knuckles, dimpled. Your...