Autobiography of Us (14 page)

She refused to speak to me those first few weeks, directing her requests instead to my father as we sat at the table, pretending to eat. She might ask him to remind me I needed to move my books from the staircase or put my shoes away properly in the closet. We sat through meals like a trio of polite strangers, pinned to the table by the glare of the overhead lights. It was, as a rule, much too bright in that house, Mother insisting on keeping the lights on all day.
No need for gloom
, she’d say briskly when my father suggested switching at least a few of the lamps off, and then she’d go around the house making sure all the rooms were lit up like department stores. The curtains she kept drawn to keep out the heat, though from my seat at the table I could make out a sliver of glass behind the heavy cloth. I spent most of those meals watching the shiny leaves of the lemon tree shift against the pane.

“There’s a new house going up on Del Mar,” my father offered at lunch one Sunday. This a month or so after I arrived home—late July, sweltering. “I drove past it the other day on my way to work.”

“Is that so?” Mother smoothed the napkin across her knees.

“Seems a shame. It was a particularly nice piece of land.”

“They’ll spoil the view.”

“Yes,” my father said deliberately, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “I suppose they will.”

My mother sat up a little straighter. “I’ll need the car later. I have to pick up some things at the store, and I can’t bear walking. I have to go right past the Lindquists’.”

“Now, Eloise—”

“
Directly
past. It’s intolerable.” Her chin had begun to quiver. “We’ll have to fix up the Ford, that’s all. I went over the numbers last night. We can manage it just fine.”

“I’ll take it in tomorrow. I—” My father coughed into his napkin.

“Walter?”

“It’s nothing,” he murmured. His eyes were watering furiously. “The chicken salad. It’s a little dry.”

She glanced down at where her food lay on her plate, untouched. “The refrigerator hasn’t been working properly all year. I told Marvin the last time he was here. I was perfectly clear.”

The phoebes called from the lemon tree.
Tsee-tsee. Tsee-tsee.

“We may as well start on dessert.” She stood abruptly.

“I’ll help.” I picked up the plates and followed her into the kitchen, where a cake sat on the counter, round and yellow as a harvest moon. “That looks good.”

She wiped a knife clean against the dish towel and began slicing. “I can’t remember the last time I bought a cake.” She still refused to look at me when she spoke. “I don’t care,” she said childishly. “It’s been too hot to cook.”

“I could give it a try.”

“I don’t recall you being particularly interested.”

“I’ve been thinking I ought to take advantage.” I shrugged before I thought better of it, but she wasn’t paying attention. “It’s not every day you get the chance to learn from the best.” She took a carton of vanilla ice cream from the freezer and began spooning it out. “That’s what my friends say, you know,” I persisted. “They always say you’re the best cook of all the mothers by about a million miles.”

She sighed. “The other mothers have
help,
Rebecca. They don’t have to cook.”

“I thought you liked cooking.”

“I do.” She placed her hands on the counter and stood a minute. “I did. I’ve lost my taste for it, that’s all. There doesn’t seem to be the time. Or I can’t be bothered to find the time. I don’t know.” She was gazing intently out the window over the sink, as though tracking something’s movements—a squirrel, I thought. A vole in among her roses. “I don’t know,” she said again. Her hair was pulled back tight from her face, and what lipstick she had applied earlier must have rubbed off, leaving her face oddly colorless. “It used to be there was never enough time, and now—well, now I’ve got all the time in the world, don’t I, and I can’t think of a thing to do.” Her tone changed again. “I’ll be forty-one this fall.”

“Betsy’s mother is forty-eight.”

“My mother used to say you could tell a woman’s age by her hands.” We both looked down at her hands, the fingers spread against the Formica. They were, I believe, very nice hands, freckled lightly but strong for their size, capable, though when I’d asked her once if she’d learned anything from Henry Girard, she’d frowned and said, no, her hands were too small and, besides, she was too stupid. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“How old?” Her voice was suddenly sharp. I believe it was the first time she’d looked at me directly since I returned. “Quick.”

But I pretended to consider them carefully. “Thirty-three. Thirty-four, tops.”

“I ought to have taken better care.”

“You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

She had that odd, distracted look on her face again. “It’s not a nice feeling, getting old. There’s nothing nice about any of it.”

“You’re not even close to old. You—”

“I find myself unwilling.”

“Mother?”

“What?” She gave herself a little shake, standing up straight and brushing at the front of her apron. “Look at this mess. The ice cream’s already melting—I swear, this heat will be the death of me.” She handed me two dessert plates. “Take that in to your father, would you?”

We sat at the table with our cake in front of us, the ice cream pooling at the bottom of the dish.

“Isn’t this delicious,” said my father. “You don’t care for it?”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite,” Mother said.

“May I be excused?”

She waved me off; she’d gotten a little of her color back, but even so she looked exhausted, her eyes gone soft around the edges as though she’d taken an eraser to the skin there and rubbed. “If you wouldn’t mind wrapping that cake up, Rebecca.”

“I ought to be going as well.” My father tucked his napkin under his plate.

“Did you need something from the store? I wanted to wait a bit, that’s all. It quiets down after four.”

“It’s Sunday.” He looked at her pleadingly. “I haven’t been in weeks now.”

She made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “And here I thought we’d all had enough of being stared at.”

“Father Timothy says—”

“Father Timothy says. I can just bet what Father Timothy says.” She stood up. “I’ll be upstairs if anyone needs me.”

“It’s only this once,” he began, but she was already turning toward the hallway, already at the bottom of the stairs.

“My head.” Her voice came back over the banister, full of reproach. “It pounds.”

We sat for a moment in silence, my father staring out at the hallway with that familiar expression of doomed adoration. At the time I had no idea how rare that sort of devotion was inside a marriage. It wasn’t until I was married myself and saw how unhappy so many couples became over the years—the initial rush of joy fading beneath the slow accumulation of disappointments—that I understood my parents had succeeded at something where others so often failed, a delicate equilibrium held in place by the careful titrations of my mother’s need for attention and my father’s desire to meet her every demand. Not that his devotion ensured their marriage was a happy one. It meant only that it kept them intact in certain areas where so many marriages crumbled, those small fissures of unkindnesses and misunderstandings and deliberate cruelties mostly absent, I believe, smoothed over by my father’s willingness to do anything—everything—to keep my mother happy.

“She doesn’t mean it,” he said finally, turning toward me. “They’re fine people. Everything’ll blow over soon enough.”

“They shouldn’t punish you.”

“It isn’t an easy business.”

“Church?” I was speaking too loudly now, but I didn’t care. “Or did you mean living in this good town of our Lord’s apostles?”

He leaned toward me, his eyes fluttering behind his glasses. In that moment I felt certain he would strike me, though of course he’d never done anything like that before. But his hand only came forward to cup my chin—my mother’s gesture; he held me there for a moment, tipping my face up so I couldn’t look away.

“Love,” he said finally. “I was referring to love, Rebecca.”

* * *

I went straight up to my room after lunch, waiting until I heard the roar of my father’s car in the driveway to take my
Grant’s
and a glass of lemonade out onto the patio.

“You scared me.” My mother swiveled around in her chair. Through the living room window came the sound of a piano: Rachmaninoff, I thought, by the crashing of all those chords, though the truth is I was never much good at telling the difference.

“I thought you were in your room.” I slid my arm casually over the front of my
Grant’s
.

“Too hot. I needed air.”

“I’ll just be inside.” I turned toward the door.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you.” She raised her voice. “We spoke with the school and you’ll be staying here for the year. Your father and I agree it’s for the best.”

I turned back. “I’m not allowed to graduate?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she sighed. “There’s no need for you to be in the dormitories, that’s all. Not when you can sleep in your own room here at home. You’ll have the old Ford to drive back and forth, once it’s fixed up. I trust you’ll find it sufficient.”

“I think—”

“I can’t say I particularly care to hear what you think.”

“But it isn’t fair.”

My mother sat up very straight. “I suppose
you
stopped to consider what was fair.”

“You didn’t see what it was like there. It was the most godforsaken—”

“You do not have to use language like that.” She cleared her throat. “Nor do you have to pretend you are incapable of following instructions.”

“I did what I thought was necessary.”

“And now that you’ve demonstrated your inability to determine exactly that, from this point forward your father and I expect to be kept abreast of everything you do.” She nodded at me. “Your course of study, for instance.”

My heart began to pound. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“Honestly, Rebecca.” She gave me a wounded look. “You must think I’m blind. Animals this, cellular that. You’ve been leaving those books around the house for ages now. I assumed it was a hobby. Undesirable, certainly, but harmless all the same.”

“So I’ve been doing a little reading.”

She shook her head with what appeared to be genuine sorrow. “I spoke with your dean this morning.”

“You called Dean Richards?”

“What have I said about that tone of voice, young lady?”

“I just don’t see why you needed to involve him in any of this,” I said, quieter.

“I had to tell him you’d be living here at home, didn’t I? Imagine my surprise when he mentioned your course schedule this fall.” She ticked things off on her fingers. “Biology, chemistry, organic something or other. All of them, he points out,
advanced
-level courses. Classes with prerequisites. Certain grade requirements.”

“He had no right.”

“Rebecca Ann.” Her voice shook with indignation. “If anyone doesn’t have the right in this situation, it’s you. To think—we’ve given you every advantage. Provided you with every opportunity. And yet you seem determined to squander your chances at happiness.” Her bottom lip had begun its familiar tremble. “What in the world were you thinking? Running off to God knows where and doing something so—so
deceitful.
So underhanded. Not to mention common. It’s beneath you, the whole thing. Beneath this family. And now…” she swept on, ignoring my protests. “Now we find out you’ve been going behind our backs all these years. What is it you’d like us to do? Sit here twiddling our thumbs while you ruin your life? And for what, I might add—some ridiculous dream?”

“It’s not a dream,” I pointed out. “Medicine is a career. And I happen to love it.”

“A
career.
” She’d produced a handkerchief and was dabbing at her eyes openly now, her cheeks stained with tears; I felt a stab of guilt. “I suppose you think
I
never loved anything,” she sniffed. “That
I
never had any dreams.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with you.”

“No, of course not.” She sat back as though all at once exhausted. “Why would any of this have anything to do with me?” I tried to say something again, but she held up her hand. “Enough. Your father and I are not the Gestapo. You’re already enrolled for the upcoming year and we are not about to
bar
you from the classroom. I leave the decision to you.” She took a cigarette from her case on the side table and held it between her fingers. “I’d only hope that your conscience might guide you away from spending your time and efforts on something of which your father and I so thoroughly disapprove.”

My heart sank a little. “Then he agrees with you.”

“You know perfectly well he does.”

“And if I go ahead as planned?”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to live with the consequences.” She struck a match and lit her cigarette, inhaling. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have some peace and quiet before it’s time to start dinner. Horowitz.” She waved toward the window. “There’s very little that brings me solace these days like Horowitz playing the Nocturne in E-flat.”

“If you could just listen—”

“Peace and quiet, Rebecca.”

“I never meant to make you unhappy.”

“Please.” She shut her eyes tight. It was awful to see her like that, no bigger than a child folded into her chair, wishing me away. The nocturne began; she kept her eyes shut. I walked to the door and stood a moment longer, waiting to see if she might call me back, and then I turned and went inside, letting the door bang shut behind me.

* * *

This will be strange to hear after everything I’ve just said, but it was my mother I found myself wishing for that day in the doctor’s office in Fresno. She would have known exactly what to do. She was, in the end, a strong woman, precise in both word and action. She would have put on her lipstick and combed her hair in her hand mirror, and then she would have told everyone, including me, what to do. But I was alone when I arrived on the overnight bus, and it was raining; by the time I found the building, my stockings were soaked through and my clothing was stuck to me all up and down my body like damp paper. I must have arrived looking like something thrown up by the sea.