Autobiography of Us (5 page)

“It does look like a nice day for the beach,” my father offered, stooping to peer out the window opposite his chair.

“The weather’s glorious,” Mother sniffed.

“We could go together?” I already knew her answer.

“Me? Goodness, no. I’ve got scads of things to attend to around the house,” she said briskly. “Not to mention there’s pie to be made for a luncheon Mary-Lou is having tomorrow. There’s only to be
one
pie, mind you, and mine is it, which means it has to be perfect. You know how those girls get about their pies.” She put on her brave face. “You go on ahead, Rebecca. Only if you feel like it, of course.”

I nodded slowly, as though I was thinking something through. “I thought maybe I’d write a letter or two first.”

She sighed again, gathering up the rest of the pillows from where she’d stacked them on the floor; sometimes it seemed my mother had an entire vocabulary of sighs, each subtly different in speed and volume, the pressures behind the release of air varying one to the next. “Has so much really changed since you wrote her yesterday?”

“The world, I should think,” my father said, leaning over to drop a kiss on my head.

* * *

I must have written Alex at least two or three letters a week that summer, spending early mornings out on the patio with a glass of lemonade and the stationery my parents had given me for Christmas years ago, my initials stamped at the top in indigo ink.

It’s hot as blazes,
I wrote.
The club’s packed to the gills. You should see the bathing suit poor old Mrs. Ostrong had on the other afternoon—it must have been from the turn of the century. Prewar at the very least. Are they keeping you busy up here? Have you played Cleopatra yet? Are the other girls nice? Are any of them half as talented as you? Do you miss me?

Her letters came fairly regularly at first:
Dear Pen, First few days here miserable, as to be expected. Bugs thick as thieves. Bed made out of goddamn iron, not to mention lumpy mattress. Company
lacking.
Present curriculum skewed toward saccharine. If I have to sing “I’M GONNA WASH THAT MAN,” etc., one more time, I swear, though at least the voice coach has a decent head on his shoulders. N.B.: Girls from Santa Barbara slippery little eels & not to be trusted! You should see what some of the idiots here try to pass off as intelligence,
she wrote.
One of my bunkmates actually asked if Marlowe was still alive—I told her, yes, alive and well and living in London with the queen. Prefers scones to crumpets. Cruel, I know, but
honestly
! I have zero tolerance for the prodigiously uninformed.
Another:
Darling Penny. I woke up this morning in a panic over the early tragedians. Dreamt I was being quizzed by a panel of directors (bearded, white-haired) & they all started shaking their heads when they asked for Aeschylus and I said WHO? I’ve only read the littlest bit of Sophocles. Euripides another story completely, thank God, but what
about
Aeschylus? Have you read him extensively? Bunkmate Laurie has loads & the plays are nothing short of marvelous. Situation to be remedied immediately upon my return. We’re to read this fall like absolute
mad,
do you hear?
Little by little, however, the frequency of her letters dwindled and then stalled; soon enough, her correspondence had been reduced to the occasional postcard.
P: My Othello’s a complete drip,
one said.
Have you ever seen a red-haired Iago?
Another read simply:
“In bocca al lupo” means GOOD LUCK—
the bottom signed with a sketch of a wolf’s head, a row of
x
’s followed by a single
A.
By August, even those had stopped coming. Meanwhile, I kept writing religiously, spending every afternoon in a state of mild agitation until the mailman came. But one by one my letters disappeared into a silence so vast it seemed to follow me wherever I went, a heaviness like the humidity that weighed on me as I hurried up El Molino toward the library or made idle chitchat with my classmates at the club before diving into the pool, testing how long I could hold my breath while my mother sat in a deck chair drawn close to the other mothers, their laughter so loud I could hear it underwater.

OF course there were all kinds of expenses that went along with going to college, expenses that in retrospect I understand must have weighed heavily on my parents. At the time I saw them as little more than nuisances, I’m afraid. In those days, tuition was still free at California’s state schools, but there were books to buy and formal dresses Mother claimed she didn’t dare try her hand at herself, new shoes she deemed
obligatory
. We spent three consecutive afternoons at Bullock’s that last week of summer, during which she took such obvious pleasure in the selection of each item—the agonizing over this dress or that one, the buttons on this one declared
cunning,
the collar on another
divine—
I finally told her she was better off choosing them herself, that if she didn’t mind I would wait in the dressing room and she could bring me what she pleased. I needed no less than three pairs of gloves for the charity balls, the invitations for which Mother set out on Mrs. Peachtree’s table as they arrived; there was a new quilt for my bed at the dorm, the old one I had used since childhood worn and yellowed by the sun beyond repair; new stockings, packed between layers of tissue; a jacket Mother had sewn herself, a smart linen thing she presented to me with a flourish as we sat together on my bed my last afternoon at home, fanning ourselves in the heat.

“Better than Neiman’s, if I do say so myself,” she declared. “It should go beautifully with that blue muslin. Of course, you’ll want to bring that new taffeta for the formal dances. The yellow one with the flowers will have to do for the rest.” She looked at me critically, the tip of her tongue caught between her lips. “I’ll have to take in the waist. You’ve lost weight.”

I glanced at my reflection in the mirror that hung on the opposite wall. My face was sober, unsmiling. “Maybe a little. The jacket is perfect.” And I meant it. For all her modesty, she was a wonderful seamstress. Her mother had taught her when she was young—out of necessity, I suppose—and now she could stitch together an entire blouse in the time it took me to cut a single sleeve from a pattern.

“I can’t say I like your color,” she said now, squinting at me. “How about an orange juice? A nice glass of milk?”

“I’m alright, I guess.”

She busied herself folding the jacket, smoothing it down beneath the tissue. “People can be cruel. Girls especially. Don’t think I don’t remember.”

I did my best to smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will. You’re a Poole girl, and we Poole girls always land on our feet. You know, I was already working at your age,” she went on. “School was never really in the cards. Daddy never would have allowed it, even if he’d lived long enough to see us all out of diapers. Still, I distinctly remember feeling relieved to have something to do. Something that took my mind off things.” She pressed her lips together: I could see her choosing her words carefully. “It isn’t healthy to have too much time to sit around and brood.”

“I haven’t been brooding.”

“You remember what I said about Alexandra.” She looked at me intently; I would have done anything to smooth the crease from her brow. “She can afford to dabble, that’s all I meant. I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury.” She pleated her skirt, a nervous gesture I recognized as one of my own. “I don’t have anything against her, darling. It’s just that I’d hate to see you make choices that lead to nothing but disappointment.”

With a great show of deliberation, I turned my gaze toward the rug, the faded patch where the light through the windows had struck it repeatedly over the years, bleaching the crimson threads to pink. “I have no intention of disappointing anyone.”

She fussed with the tissue wrapping the stockings. “Sometimes I forget how young I was when I met your father. Heaven knows what would have happened to me if he hadn’t come along. He rescued me, you know.” She paused. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it quite like that.”

“I thought you loved working for Henry,” I said, surprised.

“It was fun for a while. But I had to think of my future, didn’t I?” She left the stockings and brushed something off the collar of my blouse, her hands going automatically to straighten the shoulders. “Don’t look so down in the mouth about it, sweetheart. I never considered it a permanent solution. Much too much traveling, for one, and I’d like to remind you that Henry didn’t exactly make it easy for me. What would I have done if I hadn’t met your father? Taken a job as someone’s secretary in some ugly old office? Come home every night to a grimy little room, dinner on a Sterno?” She stood then, snapping the lid of my suitcase shut and giving it a pat. “Be sensible, darling.”

“Then you don’t regret giving it up—the traveling. The music.”

She tilted her head. “You’re full of questions today.”

I turned my attention to the skirt I’d laid aside to wear the next day, patting it down with exaggerated care. “Everything’s going to be so different.”

“It’s only natural to feel a little apprehensive. All this change! But really, you’ll find it does you good. Invigorating, I should think.” She put her hand on my shoulder, fingers tapping. “He used to practice like this—Henry, I mean. On his own arm. It just came to me now—isn’t that funny? Of course, he was getting on in his years, but it didn’t have a thing to do with age. Said it helped him understand the keyboard, to
see
it. A pure kind of vision, he called it.” She ran her hand down my arm, her fingers flying now. “He’d play anything in sight—the table at a restaurant, the dashboard of a car, his own leg. Sooner or later, though, he always had to sit down and play the real thing. I always thought it must have come as the most tremendous relief.” Her hand came to rest on mine. “You’re going to have the most marvelous time.” She tipped my head up so I had to look at her, her hair gleaming in the late-afternoon light. “You know that, don’t you?” I nodded. “Marvelous,” she repeated.

We had an early dinner that night, after which I escaped to my room, telling my parents I was tired and needed to tend to a few things before bed, the two of them exchanging looks as I kissed them good night. They would have liked me to stay awhile longer, I’m sure—Mother especially must have wanted me to linger, to sit and discuss the details of the next day over dessert and coffee. But I felt distracted at the thought of the next twenty-four hours and vaguely ill, and so I pretended not to see their disappointment, leaving them with their coffee as I turned and fled. I stood for a minute in front of my packed bags, suddenly exhausted, and then I turned the sheets back and crept into bed, too tired to so much as unbutton my blouse.

* * *

The knock on my door woke me from a deep, dreamless sleep. It was after ten, late for a call, but my mother only shook her head when I sat up.

“Sounds as though she had a fabulous time,” she said from the doorway. “You may as well say hello.” I swung my feet out from under the covers and crossed the room. “Don’t forget you’ll need your rest for tomorrow,” she added. “Both of you.”

“I won’t be long.”

“You might ask if she still plans on driving you to campus.” She turned to the side to let me pass and brushed at her housecoat the way she did when she had something to say but wouldn’t. “Goodness knows you won’t need your old mother hanging around.”

“I’ll ask,” I said. “Can I have a minute?”

“
May
I,” she said automatically.

“
May
I have a minute? Please?” She must have heard the desperation in my voice, because she only reached out to smooth my hair back from my face before turning away and disappearing down the hall. I picked up the phone immediately and clamped the receiver between my ear and shoulder. “When did you get home?”

“Hello to you too.” Her voice on the other end of the line was oddly worn—breathless and crackling with fatigue. She was
exhausted
, she said. She and her father had driven all day to get home by dark and she was
famished
, she said. She was absolutely beat.

“We’re due at the dorm by one tomorrow,” I reminded her, winding the telephone cord around and around my finger until the tip turned purple. “My father was going to take the bus so we could have the car, Mother and I. I didn’t know if you’d be back in time. But if you think you’ll still be able to drive, of course I’d rather—”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” she said, a little impatiently. “I’ll be there by noon. Noonish. I got held up, that’s all. Unavoidable delays.” She hadn’t packed, she said. She hadn’t even
un
packed, for Christ’s sake. “And for the love of God, please stop worrying,” she said. “I can hear you worrying all the way down the block, so just don’t. It’s driving me absolutely berserk.”

* * *

Morning found me dressed and at the breakfast table long before anyone was up; I made a pot of coffee and drank cup after cup while I waited for my parents to come down, Mother reaching out to tip my chin up as she came into the dining room, the lilac scent of her perfume strong.

“A little rouge?” she said, sinking into her chair. “Brighten you up? What about a touch of lipstick?” She drew one of her gold tubes from the pocket of her housecoat and slid it across the table. “The saleslady said it’s their most popular shade.” She watched as I dabbed it on my lips and pressed. “Keep it. It’s better with your complexion. Brings out your eyes.” She frowned. “You look a little tired.”

“Too excited to sleep?”

I tried to return my father’s smile. “Something like that.”

“You’d tell me if you thought we needed to run out to Bullock’s for another pair of stockings, wouldn’t you?” Mother checked her watch. “We have the time if we leave this minute. Do you have enough sweaters?”

My father stopped with his toast halfway to his mouth. “It’s ninety-five degrees today. They’re saying over a hundred by the afternoon.”