Her Mother's Daughter (73 page)

She tries to be superior, she acts as if she doesn't notice things, but she notices everything. When I said the Selbys were rich, she said maybe they were but they hadn't always been and I was astonished. “How do you know that?” And she pointed to Mrs. Selby's hands, it's true they were red and swollen, much worse than mine, and when you think how hard I have worked in my life, cooking dinner on a wood stove since I was nine years old, washing clothes on a washboard, wringing them out, how that used to hurt my hands, and all the dishes I've washed in my life, although Ed did help at night, and all the peeling and cutting and handling hot pots I've done, it's true my hands have stayed fairly good, but it does make you wonder, as Anastasia said, what Mrs. Selby has been doing with hers…. But I think she was trying to make me feel confident, she's always doing that, manipulating me. She should know how I see through her.

Joy doesn't do that. She doesn't care. But she can be fun, she makes me laugh with her stories. She's never been close to me, always out with her friends, I've hardly seen her the last year since she's been home. Glamorous job in the city, all dressed up every day, her whole salary on clothes. I did the same thing when I was her age. A place like CBS must have thousands of girls who want to work there, so if they chose her, that means she was really something special, well she has such a beautiful smile, she always did, she could melt my heart when she was a baby when she'd smile at me…. She had fun, as she should, now she's married, she'll be married the rest of her life, she should have one year of fun.

Maybe I'll just have one more cup.

Belle rose, went to the kitchen, and turned up the flame under the coffeepot. She sat down heavily on a wooden kitchen chair and waited for the coffee to heat.

Empty house, now. Quiet and peace. No one else to think about. Not that Joy was noisy, not at all, she was never here. And when she was here, always ready with a smile, not sullen like Anastasia, and she always gave me her ten dollars board without my asking, and somehow she managed to save some money too, I have good girls. Nice that Kitty and Linda could come all this way for her wedding, and Pamela too, so rich, her father's a billionaire, came all the way from Paris for Joy, she must love Joy, she made a lot of important friends at that college. You could tell she came from money. Her hair was so smooth and such a beautiful color and she was dressed so beautifully, you could see she'd always had servants and never had to worry or scrimp or feel stupid the way I have. But she was very nice to me, gracious, and when Joy and she were standing together, they looked almost the same, of course Joy doesn't have quite the same confidence, the same polish….

I wonder whether she really loves him though. Ach, what difference does it make? After a couple of years all that is over anyway, I remember how I felt about Ed oh that was such a long time ago, it doesn't mean anything. As long as he is a good provider and isn't cruel to the children, Ed wasn't a good father but I wouldn't let him hit them or yell at them of course he mumbled and muttered, he thought I couldn't hear, but I knew, I knew. Still I didn't let him act the way my father acted.

He seems a nice boy, quiet, stable, both my sons-in-law are good boys, Brad is quiet and stable now too. They'll be back from Bermuda next Sunday night, they'll stay here until they ship out, is that what he said, ship out? what shall I have for dinner? A roast; maybe lamb, with browned potatoes and green peas and some other vegetable that everybody likes, I wish I knew what he ate, maybe I'll invite Anastasia and Brad and the kids, she won't see Joy again for a long time, three years they have to stay there, I wonder if she'll get lonely, but she makes friends everywhere she goes, she's gregarious, she's like Mrs. Dabrowski not like me. Not green beans, that would be two green vegetables, maybe carrots the way I make them in butter and sugar. Is that too boring, peas and carrots? Maybe cauliflower with cheese sauce if it isn't too expensive. Beets. No, Brad doesn't like beets, and Arden really hates them, that funny picture Anastasia took of Arden in her high chair spitting out beets….

Joy will probably see Paris before I ever do.

Well, I wanted my girls to have every chance, everything I didn't have, and they do, it's the best you can hope for with a girl, marriage to a man who will provide, life that isn't utter slavery day in day out the way mine has been.

She finished her coffee, and set the cup in the sink. She looked at the clock. She walked into the dining room and stood still. It was really a lovely room. The new Chinese wallpaper was beautiful, and the pale blue in the rug picked up the pale blue shading on the bottom of the cherry branches. Her dining room. What would Momma have said if she had known I would ever have a room like this in my house?

She put her hand on her heart. Sometimes she thought her old bad heart was acting up again, so often she felt something sore there, as if she had a wound that had never healed, a cut or something, right on her heart. But that wasn't possible, was it? You've done well, she told herself. Both your girls are married to nice boys and they are going to have opportunities you yearned for, oh longed for, oh how you longed! They would have better lives and their children would not lack for anything even though of course Anastasia had a bad start and they had to live in that awful little attic room, and then that tiny apartment, but it was all over now, she could be proud of both her girls.

A motion in the street caught her eye and she walked to the front dining room window. A car had pulled up in front of the Lynches'. She peered out without moving the curtain. She wasn't wearing her glasses, and she had to squint. Yes, it was Rosemary, she visited her mother every day, imagine! With both the children, so little, just babies really, and Rosemary looked as if she were pregnant again. And every day Mrs. Lynch had them there! Anastasia had a friend who had seven children, it was disgusting, she told Anastasia it was disgusting and Anastasia looked at her so funny, as if she were crazy or something, and said “Why should you care? Why should you get so upset?” She wasn't upset, she was just disgusted, it was revolting, why should you need to put out that many children, like a disgusting animal putting them out putting them out putting them out…. But Anastasia didn't like to visit her friend, what was her name, some Irish or Italian name, Catholic, of course, she didn't enjoy spending time in a house with seven little children well who would?

No, two, and then no matter what a struggle it is they grow up and they're gone when there's still time to think about yourself, you have a little life left in you. Poor Mrs. Lynch, she was so pretty once but no teeth in the front of her mouth, it is shocking really, such a nice house and he certainly spends money on his fun with that red nose, but she can't afford to have her teeth fixed, and she's young still, younger than I, I'll bet she isn't forty-eight yet.

Maybe, if Ed gets a nice bonus this Christmas and I can spread the wedding payments out over a year and a half, we could go. Heidelberg, it is supposed to be beautiful there. And maybe we could go to Paris too. How much would that cost?

A familiar dread closed in around her heart.

She stopped herself as she was mounting the stairs. No, really, how much? Two thousand dollars for three weeks? That was all the vacation Ed had. Maybe fifteen hundred. So if he got a thousand-dollar bonus this Christmas and she made more hats than usual and saved every penny…they could eat more cheaply now there were only two of them, and she always watched every penny…. Maybe by the spring, she thought, and something in her heart carried her up the stairs like wings, maybe we could really go.

To Europe!

She reached the bedroom. It was hot up here, it was a hot day. She walked across the room and drew the shades down two-thirds of the window length. Hot. She would work in her slip. She pulled off her blouse and skirt, and sat down on her work chair facing the sewing machine. She looked over at the small pile of white organdy hats standing near the corner of Ed's chest of drawers. She'd love to get a new bedroom set too. But if they went to Germany next year, she would be able to visit Joy. She could see where she lived and how, it would be easier to think about her if she could picture it.

She sat utterly still for a moment; her body wanted to slump, it felt tired already and it was only eleven in the morning. Oh, if only…She reached for a cigarette. She took a few puffs, raising her head to blow the smoke out. Then she pushed her chair closer to the machine, laid the cigarette in an ashtray, and switched on the small lamp on her vanity. She tried to pick up a circle of organdy, but the thin fabric made several circles stick together, and she had to wet her fingers with saliva before she could separate one. Finally, she laid it on the machine, under the needle, and reached down into a cardboard carton for a length of ruching. She laid the ruching on the organdy, bent her head over the machine, put her feet on the pedal, and gave the wheel a sharp tug to start it. Then she began to work.

A
UGUST 1957

Rockville Centre. Outdoors.

Kodak 135 Color film, ASA 100, bright afternoon sunlight, apertures as marked, 50-foot zoom wide-angle and portrait lenses on the Leica.

Photo 1. Taken at twenty feet with w/a lens. In the foreground are two people. Belle Stevens is looking well-to-do and fashionable, wearing a white linen halter dress with a full skirt. Sequined appliqués adorn the pocket of the skirt and the borders of a fine white wool sweater that matches the dress but is presently hanging over the back of the freshly painted white Adirondack chair on which she sits. Her shoes are wedgies with twisted leather straps crisscrossing the instep. The straps are white and brown. Belle's blond hair is short and softly dressed, and kept in place by hair spray, a relatively new invention. At this distance, it is difficult to see facial details, but Belle is smiling, leaning back, and holding a tall glass with ice in it. Sitting opposite her in an outdoor chair made of aluminum with pale green plastic strips interwoven on seat and back, but leaning forward, talking, is Joy Selby, her daughter. Joy is also well-dressed. She has chosen for this occasion a pale blue cotton so highly brushed it looks like satin. It has tiny straps over the shoulders, and a narrow bodice, with horizontal pleats and a single small button at the center. At the waist is a two-inch-wide matching belt above a full skirt. Joy is wearing white high-heeled sandals, and carries a white leather handbag. At present, the bag is lying against the chair leg, in the grass, which in this picture is very green. Her hair is very short and very blond. She looks smart, even glamorous with her white button earrings, her well-applied makeup, and her broad smile. She is so attractive she could have stepped right out of an ad in
World
magazine, any of the ads propagating a new postwar image of domestic bliss which can be achieved through the purchase of a certain make of car, breakfast cereal, soap, or sanitary napkins. Joy could pose in any of these ads, because although her attractiveness verges on glamour, she looks wholesome, a girl you would not feel intimidated by, a girl who would not threaten your family stability.

In the rear right hand of the photograph are several figures, some of which are a bit blurred because they were in motion when the picture was snapped. Those in motion are Billy, aged seven, who is in the act of throwing up his hands and opening his mouth in what appears to be a huge guffaw, after having gently tossed a softball to Jonathan, aged two, who has reached so far forward for the ball that he has tilted, like a board, clear over into the grass. Jonathan is about to ruin his beautiful little blue suit, a handknit from Germany with a matching coat and hat which presently lie upstairs in a drawer in Joy's old bedroom which also holds several suitcases, a crib and a cot, as well as Joy's makeup, hair spray, curlers, setting lotion, hair dryer, comb and brush, and her large bottle of Joy perfume, one of many purchased recently, duty-and tax-free, at a PX near Heidelberg, Germany. Billy is wearing jeans and a red-and-white-striped polo shirt, with sneakers. No one has made a comment about his attire. Similar clothing is being worn by his sister,

Arden, who as a girl and an eight-year-old, might be expected to have worn a dress, dainty white socks, and Mary Janes. It is true that such clothing would be ruined by her present activity, lying on her stomach directly on the grass, reading a book in the slight shade offered by a flowering crab apple tree not presently in bloom. This tree will, a decade hence, be struck by lightning in a storm, and be cut up for firewood. Arden occasionally looks up and toys with Julie, a tiny girl, six months old, strapped into a slanted baby-carrier, who occasionally wakes and looks around blinking. She is wearing a hand-embroidered dress of fine handkerchief linen, in an appropriate pale pink, with lace trim around the round collar and the cuffs, also purchased in Germany. This tiny work of art is somewhat soiled by stains under the child's chin where she dribbled some of the orange juice she was given an hour ago. Her mother sighed.

Several persons present at this gathering are missing from this scene. One is the picture taker, Anastasia Carpenter, who is also dressed inappropriately in short white shorts and a man's shirt tied below the waist, with socks and sneakers. Her long hair is braided into a thick plait that hangs down her back, and she wears no makeup. Her mother greeted her with a silent survey and a proffered cheek. She greeted Arden and Billy with the same survey, although in their case, blame did not adhere to them but to their mother, the picture taker. Therefore Belle kisses the children and hugs them. They like her and they hug her back with energy. This information cannot be found in this picture, nor in any of the pictures. It resides gnawingly in the picture-taker's mind.

The others absent from the photograph are Ed Stevens, Wilton Bradley Carpenter, and Justin Selby, Jr. These people are at the moment inside the house, in the kitchen. Ed is fixing drinks. He works silently and efficiently, he seems to be concentrating. From the way he has lined up the bottles, the mixers, a blue glass bowl holding ice cubes, and glasses of various sizes and shapes, an onlooker could deduce that he is trying to perform his task in the same way a machine would—with efficient repetitiousness and economy of movement. Indeed, once he has set up his materials, he does accomplish the task in record time. However, it takes him a long time to set up his materials in the proper order, partly because—and he swears under his breath at the fact—Someone—unquestionably not he and certainly not Belle, who knows that ice cubes are his domain and would not think of interfering with them, but Someone—probably one of the two adults presently residing in the house as guests, and most likely the male adult who can if he wishes hear the smothered curse, standing as he is only a few feet away—Someone has replaced in the freezer a half-empty tray of ice cubes. With noisy angry gestures, Ed empties the five cubes left in the tray into the blue bowl, refills the tray with water, and replaces it in the freezer. Then, sighing audibly, he returns to making drinks. The two other men in the kitchen are talking, but not to Ed. Nor, after the exchange of a short greeting, does he look at them. They are discussing the new jet airplanes.