Roadblock I
Restored in October 2026 from a 2003 copy of the original PenBase page saved by the Wayback Machine; Pentrace’s own database copy had been cut short.
I don’t get to have tea with my old friend Anita nearly often enough. So I was delighted to see her late Friday morning as she left the bank and I the post office.
“Anita, we must talk,” I began.
She narrowed her eyes as she always did whenever I used the word “must.” Usually she replied with, “We must, must we?” in a particularly mocking tone of voice, but this time she only snorted softly and took my arm. “Very well, Marian,” she replied, “let us have tea at Mirabelle.”
Mirabelle is a relatively new business in town, a small café run by a former student of Anita’s. Of course, most of the population over twenty consists of her former students, but she doesn’t like most of them as well as she does Patricia, who was particularly good at algebra.
I laughed when she told me that. “If she was so good at algebra, why is she running a café? Why isn’t she off teaching math someplace or crunching numbers?” I demanded.
“Crunching numbers?” Anita replied, looking disgusted. “Really Marian, you make use of the most peculiar expressions.”
“You know very well what I mean, Anita,” I replied, but she only smiled. “I suppose,” I continued, “that you’re going to tell me she enjoys running a café more than she enjoys working with numbers.”
Anita’s smile broadened into a grin. “I’m quite sure it never occurred to her to do anything with numbers after she got out of high school,” Anita said. “She married the day after graduation and now has two children in high school and one in the eighth grade. Her husband finally agreed that the time was right for her to work outside the home. Her youngest, Alicia, comes here right after school. The older children are both boys who play football, so they are occupied in the afternoon.”
Tea at Mirabelle was a ritual for us as long as Anita could drive into town easily. Last year, however, her doctor suggested that she limit her driving to what was absolutely necessary, and she agreed. So nowadays Anita doesn’t use her car except in emergencies, and she only gets into town when someone gives her a lift. I drive out to see her when time allows, but that is not too often. Ever since my husband’s death I’ve worked full time, and I’m not about to stop now that I’m seventy-five. Fortunately I am self-employed, so there is no mandatory retirement age for me. My work doesn’t leave me much time for socializing as I am the only undertaker in town.
Yes, I know it is a somewhat unusual profession for a woman, but I’m good at what I do. I learned everything I know about the business from my husband who ran it before me. He was the town’s undertaker for nearly thirty years.
Of course, I have several assistants, mostly young men. But they tend to be careless if left unsupervised. And most of the bereaved prefer to deal with me. After all, I’ve lived here much of my life, and they know me as their parents and grandparents knew my forbears.
So it was a real treat to take tea with Anita. Besides I wanted to tell her that I’d finally taken her advice and gotten myself a real fountain pen.
Anita had nagged me for years about fountain pens, and I had resisted. When I was fifty, I developed arthritis in my right hand. Anita suggested that I get myself a fountain pen to make writing easier. I scoffed at her and continued to use my ballpoints. When rollerballs came into fashion, I switched, as they required much less pressure than ballpoints. But finally even rollers became too difficult and I gave in and bought myself one of those disposable fountain pens. It was scratchy and I disliked it. But it was easier on my aching hand than rollerballs had been. Last week I’d had to be in the city and stopped on the way at an office supply store to buy some new disposable fountain pens, but they were out of them. To my surprise, however, the manager told me that the old stationery store downtown might have some. I made a point of stopping there and met the most delightful young man who told me that they did indeed have disposable fountain pens but that they also had a sale on what he called lower end refillable fountain pens. He pulled out a few, dipped them, and let me write with them. I settled on a very dignified, blue Cross Radiance which, so he said, used to cost forty dollars but was discounted to only nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. I thought twenty dollars was an outrageous amount to pay for a writing implement, especially since ink or cartridges were extra, but he did the math for me and showed me that I’d quickly recoup my expenditure if I used bottled ink because I wouldn’t have to keep buying those disposable things. “And it’s better for the environment too,” he said with a lovely smile.
I was concerned that I’d have difficulty with the bottled ink as twisting motions make my hands ache, so I tried to purchase cartridges instead.
“You won’t save as much money,” he scolded me, “and cartridges are wasteful because you have to dispose of the plastic. Why don’t you try filling the pen from an ink bottle?”
“May I do that?” I asked.
“Now that you’ve paid for the pen, there’s no reason why not,” he replied with another smile.
“But I don’t have a bottle of ink.”
“Use this one.” He indicated the bottle in which he’d dipped the pen in order to let me try it.
I filled the pen quite easily, so I bought a bottle of blue ink and a bottle of black and left the stationery store with the thanks of the young man.
I hadn’t told Anita that I’d bought the pen. I was waiting to surprise her. Since I had the pen with me, now seemed as good a time as any.
When Anita and I entered the café and seated ourselves by the window, as was our custom, Patricia immediately raced over to our table. She barely glanced at me but smiled broadly at Anita and squealed, “Miss Carswell, how good to see you! You are well, I hope?”
I made no comment on her use of a declarative sentence to pose a question. I might have done so, had Anita not promptly replied, “I’m very well, thank you, Patricia. And I hope you and the children are too.”
“I’m fine, just fine,” Patricia burbled. “And so is James.”
James was her husband, and Anita hadn’t asked after him because she disliked him. Patricia blithered on, “Alicia will be so sorry to have missed you. She is the only one in her class who can use the quadratic formula to solve equations, and she’s quite proud of herself. Ever since you showed it to her you’ve been high on her very short list of awesome (to use her word) adults.”
Anita smiled and I thought I might gag from the sweetness and light. To preclude that and to put a halt to Patricia’s babbling, I cleared my throat very loudly, drawing the attention of Anita, Patricia, and the other four customers at Mirabelle to myself.
“I’m not sure,” I declaimed, “if I’d should order a pot of Darjeeling as I’d planned or a cup of that Sumatran and Ethiopian blend. What do you think?” I asked, looking at Patricia intently.
Anita’s nose twitched slightly in amusement as Patricia flushed and looked confused. “I should think,” Anita observed, “that would depend on whether you wish to drink tea or coffee.”
Patricia, relieved to be off the hook, nodded her agreement. I merely rolled my eyes. “If I had a clear preference,” I said waspishly, “do you think I’d have asked for an opinion?”
Patricia flushed again and looked even more confused. “Well,” she replied hesitantly, “I like the coffee blend better myself, but I’m not a tea drinker.”
Anita smiled at her. “I’m sure you remember that it always takes Marian a long time to make up her mind.,” she announced, not quite truthfully. I know she was referring to the very few times I’d not been able to choose between fruit cobbler and ice cream pie, both of which are specialties of the house at Mirabelle and very, very good, but I am usually quite decisive. I’m sure Anita knew quite well that I was dithering in order to stop Patricia’s ridiculous fawning. I narrowed my eyes at her, but she pretended not to notice.
“I’ll have a pot of tea,” she said, winking at Patricia. “Jasmine tea, please.”
Patricia beamed at her, and I snorted. “Very well then, I’ll take the Darjeeling,” I grumbled. “And an almond cookie.”
Patricia nodded and showed her teeth in a weak imitation of a smile as she walked off to get our tea. I had nothing against Patricia. I simply found her adoration of Anita nauseating. It had been almost twenty years since Patricia graduated from high school and she was still trying to be the teacher’s pet.
Anita often had that effect on her former students, the ones who didn’t detest her, that is. There were those who fawned and those who crossed the street to avoid having to greet her. It never ceased to amaze me that Anita, the person I knew who was most averse to extremes of all kinds, seemed to evoke the most extreme reactions.. I wondered, not for the first time, at the paucity of equal relationships in her life, especially since the death of her long-time companion and dearest friend Dora Clarence. I knew that in Anita’s situation I’d be terribly lonely, living by myself in an old, remodeled farm house several miles from town.
It seemed to me that Anita had made no new friends since Dora’s death, though she had gathered a small coterie of admirers around her. Of course, I took her to task for that. She’d disagreed violently with my diagnosis, but that was only to be expected.
“Don’t exaggerate, Marian!” she’d scolded me that last time I broached the topic. “I know you don’t consider Jason, Lisa, or any of the other young people I’ve spent time with these past few years as appropriate friends for me, but they have been good for me. I haven’t gotten as set in my ways as I might otherwise have done. As set in my ways as some people I know,” she added, peering at me over her hawk’s beak of a nose.
“Ah yes,” I’d replied. “The adolescent fan club! Make you feel young, do they? Well, you’re not!”
This brought a snort of laughter from Anita. “I have made a few friends closer to my own age, as you well know,” she continued. “I’ve mentioned Morris Diamant and Miranda to you, I’m sure.”
“People you spent a few days with and are likely to see about once a year, if even that often,” I retorted.
“A very intense few days,” she said. “Obviously they feel close enough to me to have invited me to participate in their wedding.”
“Acquaintances get invited to weddings,” Anita. And to funerals. Friends are people one sees on a regular basis.”
She smiled at me. “Well then, it’s a good thing I have you then, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” I replied, but I was not mollified. “However, one friend is not enough.”
“Oh, I have a whole horde of pen collecting friends,” she teased.
“Disciples!” I protested.
“Hardly! I have nothing to preach, Marian. No gospel to propagate. You of all people should know that.”