Her Mother's Daughter (120 page)

Franny wouldn't go to bed, and at some point she fell asleep in the chair. Billy and I were talking, I was telling him about the Houston conference, and for a while we didn't notice the sharp silence in a corner of the room. When we did, we looked at the chair, at each other, and smiled.

“Want me to carry her in to bed the way I used to when she was little?” Billy laughed.

“When she was little?”

“Yeah. Remember how on the nights when you came back from trips, we'd all sit up talking half the night? Toni'd fix you some dinner and you'd eat and tell us all about your adventures, and it would get to be midnight but Franny would refuse to go to bed? Usually she'd fall asleep in your lap, sucking her thumb. And I'd carry her up to bed.”

I'd forgotten that. It came back with a pang. Happy days. They had seemed to be happy days.

“I remember,” I smiled, but I could feel my mouth tremble. “She's gained a few years and more than a few pounds since then, though. I'll wake her up.”

I tried, but she wasn't having any, the little fake! She kept her eyes squeezed shut and wouldn't move and finally Billy and I had to lift her and carry her—he at her head, I at her feet—into her room, where we swung her thrice and threw her on the bed with a vengeance, and she cried out and burst into giggles, and threw her arms around Billy and wouldn't let him go.

I kissed her good night and left the room, so she could have her brother to herself. When Billy came back into the living room, he asked if I wanted a drink, and went to pour them. It was like having Toni back again, a handsome young man who serves drinks and talks like an adult. Is an adult.

He settled down in the armchair near the couch and asked me how I'd been apart from the conference.

“Good!” I lied brightly. “And tell me how you've been.”

He colored a little. “I'm in love.” Her name was Livvy; he'd met her at Mass General, where they were in the same program; she was his age, with long dark hair she kept rolled up in a bun days and only took down at night…. His eyes glazed over.

“I see,” I said, careful not to smile. I did see.

“She's wonderful.” He took out a photograph to show me.

“She's beautiful.” She was. “I'm so glad, sweetheart.” I had been afraid he would never let himself have that, the experience of falling in love. He was so withdrawn, withholding, stiff inside himself.

“And this is serious.”

He shrugged. “Well, yeah, serious….”

“But you're not ready for marriage?”

“Right.” He sipped his wine. “We both have two more years, well, one and a half, to go. And after that, we could go anywhere. We're in the same residency program, and we could get jobs anywhere.”

“But you have something to say about where you practice.”

“Yeah,” he conceded. “But with tropical medicine you usually take what comes up.”

“Tropical medicine! I didn't know that was your specialty! I thought you were studying internal medicine!”

“I was. I am. I'm going to do an extra year to study the infectious diseases of the Third World…you know, bilharziasis and malaria and yellow fever and byssinosis and parasites and things like that.”

I sat back. “Billy!” I breathed. “Oh, Billy!” This was no slimy creep, no calculating toad, no self-advancing cold-hearted money-mad golf-playing suburban medical predator! This was the son I'd wanted.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I mean, I'm moved. So you'll go to Africa or Asia?”

“Or South or Central America. Wherever there's an opening.”

“I'm very proud of you, sweetheart.” I reached forward and stretched my arms out to him; he shifted his body forward and let me embrace him, embracing me in return. “I'm really so proud,” I whispered. My throat was full.

“I'm glad, Mom, but…this is what I always intended. I mean, it shouldn't be a surprise.”

“I didn't know that. I don't recall hearing you say that.”

He looked annoyed. “I told you.”

“When?”

“Years ago. You never listen when I talk.”

I didn't know what to say. Would I not have heard, remembered, such a thing? “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “I didn't talk about it much around Arden because I didn't want Dad to know.”

I pulled away from him. “Because then he might not have paid for your school?”

He sat up blinking. “What? Why? He would have paid, whatever I did….You have some idea about me. You sound as if you think I'm really a creep.”

What could I say?

He glared at me. His voice sounded irritable. “You know Dad always wanted to be a doctor himself. He was really happy about my going to med school. But, well, you know how Dad is. He'd already picked out a site where he was going to build me an office, and he was talking about all the patients he'd get me, all his friends, these middle-aged guys getting ready to croak. And I didn't want that, but I didn't want to upset him before the fact. Because I wasn't sure, you know, that I'd get through, or that I'd still want to do this when I got older. But now I am and I do. I'm positive I don't want to go out to Long Island and live in a ranch house and treat well-to-do white people who have all their lives overindulged—oh, I guess they get really sick too, I don't mean to be snarky. But I don't want that life, playing golf with the same guys once a week like Dad does, seeing the same people at the Country Club every Saturday night, all that, you know. I couldn't stand it. Livvy feels that way too. So maybe we'll be able to go out together….” He moved into a dreamy smile, his eyes focused on an inner sight.

I rested against the back of the sofa, comfortable, at rest, relaxed. My body felt suddenly recovered from rheumatism, arthritis, some stiffening disease.

“I didn't know your father wanted to be a doctor. I thought he wanted to be a saxophone player. But why didn't you want Arden to know?”

“Oh, it was stupid I guess. You remember how she was in those years. We didn't get along too well. I thought if she knew, she might, if she got angry with me or something, blurt it out to Dad. I know that was stupid, she never would have, no matter how angry she was at me. But I felt I had to keep my ideas to myself.”

“But Arden was gone. I mean, by the time you started medical school she was married and off on the commune and hardly ever home. You didn't want to tell
me.
” I concluded with the triumph of being right.

“I
did
tell you!”

“Billy, if you did, it was in passing, one of a number of ideas you were considering. Although I don't recall your mentioning it at all.”

His facial muscles twitched, he frowned. He got his mouth in order. “I didn't make a point of it. You know…you didn't seem to like me very much. I know I wasn't too great…I mean, I know I was sort of angry…in those years, but to have your mother turn against you, it's…it's…And I wasn't exactly sure I was going to do this. I didn't want to come and tell you something that I knew you'd like, as if I was sucking up to you, trying to make you like me.”

“Sucking up to me! Why shouldn't you tell me something that would please me? How could you think I didn't like you!” I cried, reaching for his hands. “Billy, I've been so hurt because I felt you turned away from me! You were never home, you were always with Daddy.”

“You
didn't
like me, Mom,” he said quietly. “You were furious with me for spending time with Dad—even though you were the one who told me to.”

“I
was
furious, you're right,” I recalled. “I felt you were sucking up to Daddy so…” I stopped in time.

“So…what?”

“Oh! So he'd help you, I guess,” I confessed, hot in the face.

He considered. “You mean, pay for school. That's what you insinuated before.” He was quiet. “It's really true, you didn't think much of me.” He started to get up. Would he leave? Oh, god! How could I keep him?

I raised my voice. “Well, what was I supposed to think? You're home, we're close, everything's fine, then suddenly you start practically living at your father's house! What would you have thought if Arden did that? Really!”

“I might have thought she went there because she couldn't bear being around you and Toni, you know? She had quite a crush on Toni in those days.” He was in a cold rage, but he sat down again.

“I know she did.” I stopped. “What…?” I stopped again.

“You know, Toni wasn't that much older than me. It was hard to watch the two of you. I didn't like being around the house. Especially after Arden left. You two were so…cozy…I didn't want to explode at him, tell him he was a disgusting pig. I didn't want to upset you.” Now he did get up—but went only as far as the kitchen to fetch the wine bottle. He filled our glasses.

When he returned I burst out, “I thought you loved Toni! And he wasn't a pig! Why do you say that?”

He was leaning way back in the chair with his long legs crossed up high, and his hand shielding his face so I couldn't see him. “I did, when we were little. Something changed. I don't know, things seemed different. Maybe you were more open about…because we were more grown up. I know he wasn't a pig. I even sort of knew that then.”

My god.

“Why didn't you talk to me, tell me?”

He shrugged. “I couldn't, I was too angry. Anyway, what was I going to say? Don't love your husband? I mean, he
was
your husband, even if it never felt that way. And then he was gone, and you seemed so pissed all the time, well I guess he broke your heart, it was hard to talk to you. And by then I was someplace else too.”

And now that he was in love, now that desire was part of his daily hunger and its satisfaction part of his daily bread, he understood how it had been for Toni and me, could forgive it. But why hadn't
I
seen? I, who pride myself on my perceptiveness, my acuity? Where in hell
was
I?

“I'm annoyed with myself. I should have realized,” I mumbled. “I should have tried to talk to you.” Didn't because you were too busy calling him a slimy toad for sucking up to his father. No trust, Anastasia!

“Well, maybe. I'm not sure it would have helped—then. You know, sometimes you just have to wait for things to change. I see that often, in medicine. Everything we do, we think we're so smart, but whatever intervention we make, we have to wait and see how the patient himself, his body, his psyche, how he handles it, what he does with what we do.”

“Or she.”

“What?”

“Aren't some of your patients women?”

“You're right,” he laughed. “Med school gets you like that.”

“I'm sure. So un-get like that.”

“Livvy should hear you, she'd be giving me such a look right now!” he laughed.

“Good! We'll get along!”

“Do you think so? I was wondering…” He eyed me. Yes, he'd been jealous of me and expected me to be jealous of him. But I wasn't. Not at all. Was I? “Livvy's visiting her family. They live outside of Boston. But we both have three more days off, and I wondered…”

I considered. “You can have my room and I'll sleep on the couch.”

“No! No, Mom! I won't do it like that. But you have a futon, don't you? We could sleep in here.”

“Done. Call her.”

He looked at his watch. “It's too late now. I'll call her in the morning. That's great, Mom, thanks.”

“Oh, honey,” I said, “it is, truly, deeply, my pleasure.”

So he did and she came and she is wonderful and I love her, and I'm
not
jealous! Or if I am, I'm not jealous enough to cause difficulties, to me, him, or her. Franny liked her too, and when we were all home together, around the dinner table, it felt as if we were a family again. This turned out to be a wonderful Christmas. Only Arden was missing.

I have my boy back, though I'm not sure I deserve him. Maybe it won't last. It was so easy. But it was easy because of what has happened to him—our reconciliation had to wait until he fell in love. But maybe it's only temporary. That could be. Oh, let it not be!

I forgot to tell him that Toni did
not
break my heart. I don't like him thinking that. I'll have to remember to tell him next time I see him.

M
AY
4, 1979 Mom is very bad. She was here for Easter dinner—Easter means nothing to us, we celebrate it only because of her, and she celebrates it because her mother did. I decided to have it here and ask her to make the drive because she got so angry about my messing up her oven at Christmas. I can't cook and leave a clean kitchen behind me. Neither can she, why is she so pissy?

They arrived here about two o'clock Sunday and she went immediately into my room to lie down. She got up at four, when we had drinks and appetizers. She made it through dinner, but was back in bed by eight-thirty, and didn't get up again. Was she that tired or was she just furious at having to drive in here? You can't tell. She is always so tired. I wanted to take her shopping on Monday—there's a shop here that sells fashionable clothes in large sizes and I thought maybe they might have some nice suits to fit her. That would make her happy, I thought. But she was too tired. They went home immediately after breakfast.

J
UNE
24, 1979. Clara, Franny, and I are going to take a trip together this summer, to Italy. Clara can't really afford it, but she'll get an APEX fare, and we'll all stay in one room, in cheap pensione, so she'll be able to manage. I'll pay for the car rental, it would be the same whether she was with us or not. She'll use the trip to interview European feminists, and I have an assignment to photograph Italian women in politics, mainly in Milan. We'll start at Rome and drive north. I'm sort of excited. Maybe we'll have fun.