Mrs. Troma - Chapter 4

The big day had finally come, and Mrs. Troma woke up early. It was spring and the crocuses had sprung up around the Japanese maple in the backyard. She went downstairs to the kitchen, tied a tidy apron around her waist, and flung open the windows smiling happily as the fresh air engulfed her. She made coffee and French toast and bacon. Mr. Troma came down soon afterwards and they ate breakfast together, as they always did.

Mr. and Mrs. Troma were a happy couple. They had met at the City University ten years earlier, he studying socketry, she folk dancing. When she was in school she dreamed of traveling to the Carpathians, and learning brown bear dances from the few remaining people who kept to the traditional ways. Mr. Troma studied socketry. She often sewed her own skirts from brightly colored fabric she bought from dingy stores, run by exotic seeming men and ladies in head scarves who smelled of unidentifiable, yet undeniably interesting, spices. Mr. Troma studied socketry.

After University Mr. and Mrs. Troma married. Mrs. Troma festooned their small flat with braided streamers and flowers she found at the Copper Market in The City. Mr. Troma got a job at Socketry International. Mrs. Troma knew, and being a cheerful person, was resigned to the fact that Mr. Troma would never agree to visit the Carpathians or the Urals or The Sandwich Islands. Mr. Troma did well at his job and advanced quickly through the ranks of Socketry International. Soon they were able to move out of their flat and into a small house. One of the things Mrs. Troma liked about it was that it was situated right across the street from a playground which was perfect for the many children she planned to have. She pictured circles of happy boys and girls dancing the simple yet pretty steps of the Albanian goat dance around the swing set. The years passed and no children came. Doctors were consulted, but to no avail.

One day, while Mr. Troma was at work, Mrs. Troma wandered through her beloved Copper Market, before catching a matinee at the Torquemada Grand National Theatre. She loved the exotic piles of brightly colored silks and cottons, imported from the far away places she had dreamed of visiting while at school. She gazed at small painted panels that depicted in bright tempera, men with elephant heads, clever looking monkeys and beautiful dark-haired women in exquisitely painted translucent saris and robes. She pushed her dark blonde hair behind one ear and smiled to herself as she looked at an etching of the Crocodillius, one of her favorite dances, printed in a delicate shade of green on brittle papyrus. Still smiling, Mrs. Troma looked up and saw, off to the side, a small tent draped with rusty looking yellow velvet. Over a black shrouded doorway was a sign that said “The Wondrous Madame Purple: Consultant”.

The combination of the exotic with the matter of fact on the sign intrigued Mrs. Troma, and she decided she wanted a consultation. She crossed over to the tent, pushed aside the heavy black curtain veiling the entrance and stepped inside. The curtain closed behind her shutting out the din of the market and the noise of the city beyond with the suddenness of the pulling of a switch. All was silent within the tent. There was little light and the smell and fog of incense was thick and sweet in the corners, drifting slightly less pungently into the center of the space. Mrs. Troma peered around her.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Yoo hoo. Anyone here?”

Still nothing.

“Um. Madame Purple?”

A phlegmy cough punctured the quiet.

“Six guilders.” Cough.

“Excuse me?”

“You. If you want the consultation. Six guilders. Up front. Cash. (cough, cough) No checks. None of those charge cards. Cash.”

“Ma’am, are you Madame Purple?” asked Mrs. Troma.

“Six guilders.”

Mrs. Troma stepped a little closer to where she thought the voice was coming from. As her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, she could see in the corner what would have looked like nothing more than a pile of fabric and laces, if it wasn’t for a bare white hand sticking out of it, palm face up.

Mrs. Troma dug in her purse for six guilders, and finding the coins, dropped them into the bony white hand.

“Sit.”

“Well, Madame Purple, what I-“

“Don’t talk. (cough) Sit.”

Mrs. Troma sat. Madame Purple pulled a small plastic TV tray out from behind her, unfolded the legs, and set it up between them. She fished out a chamois cloth bag from among her robes and veils and plunked out what looked like polished chicken bones onto the flowered patterned plastic. Anyway, Mrs. Troma hoped they were chicken bones. They looked disturbingly like the bones from a human hand she had studied during her required anatomy course at university. She supposed Madame Purple was examining them from behind the lace and gauze. Looking over at her, she shuddered as she got the impression that the lump of fabric was peering at her, rather than at the shiny bones.

Mrs. Troma shifted uneasily and regretted her decision in coming here. It smelled funny, too.

“What do you-“

“Shh. (cough)”

They sat in total silence for a few more minutes. A very long few minutes for Mrs. Troma.

“Here.” Madame Purple’s hand was once again outstretched. This time it held a small (slightly dirty) square of cardboard. Mrs. Troma took the card, noting the interesting gold ring on her finger, molded in the shape of (she thought) an octopus. The card read:

Mrs. Troma was confused. “What am I-“

“Good-bye.” said Madame Purple.

“How did-“

“GOOD-BYE.” said Madame Purple, who sunk back into the gloom.

Mrs. Troma opened the curtain that covered the doorway and the urban soundtrack was switched back on. She blinked in the bright sunlight.

When she would think of Madame Purple in later years, and she often thought back on that day, she knew she must have boarded the subway, ridden to The Torquemada Grand National Theatre, and watched the show. She still had the ticket stub and program pasted into the scrapbook she used to house the mementoes of things she had seen and places she visited. But of the show itself, a well-received musical called Noses and Feet Dance Dance Dance, and a hot ticket she was lucky to get (Socketry International was nothing if not well connected), she remembered nothing.

She thought of the card Madame Purple had given her. Mr. & Mrs. Troma had spoken of adopting a child, they wanted to raise one (or several in Mrs. Troma’s case) so badly and there were so many unwanted children in the world. Mrs. Troma had read of childless couples journeying to Upper Mongolia or the Dead Sea and adopting children out of orphanages there. She loved the idea, but it was so expensive and traveling was so difficult these days, even when some of the problems could be smoothed over by the powers that be at Socketry International (who had local branches everywhere).

She knew Mr. Troma wouldn’t think much of an adoption agency, and a religious one at that, which arranged for cards to be given out by fortunetellers at the Copper Market. Mrs. Troma knew she could argue that there was no evidence that The Order of Our Lady of Untrammeled, Perpetual and Unavailing Mercy had arranged any such thing. Madame Purple could hand out Mr. Troma’s business cards from her tent and it wouldn’t mean he was any less competent at his job.

Mrs. Troma decided it would be best if she neglected to mention to Mr. Troma just how she had found out about this new adoption agency. She knew this is where she must find her beloved much dreamed about child. Madame Purple had all the trappings of a fraud, Mrs. Troma knew that, but something in her felt the very uncanniness of the experience, no matter how spurious the trappings might be, had pointed her in the direction she must take.