Lillian on Life (2 page)

T
he first car I remember was a Studebaker Champion. Corky's family eventually got one too, and theirs was a pale sea green, aquamarine in the bright sunshine, and I envied the color. Ours was tan, however the sun was shining, but it was the first in our neighborhood of Columbia, Missouri. I felt sorry for Mother that she always sat in the front and never got to sit behind Poppa and watch him drive. You can't see that much of people nowadays because the seat backs and headrests come up so high. Also because steering wheels are smaller now. When Poppa bought that car it must have been 1948 or so—yes, it was; I remember because I was fifteen and Mother had allowed me to get my ears pierced when I turned fifteen, and I always made sure I had earrings on to go out in the car. The steering wheel was a smooth wide circle, set up high, and when Poppa drove I could see his head and neck and shoulders and hands, and the Freemason's ring that flashed on his right pinkie.

George Junior got that ring when Poppa died. I have the diary he kept during the war, somewhere, and his Purple
Heart medal too. He wrote about advancing across French fields with his friends falling and dying to his right and left. I knew about that already because Mother told me. He kept writing in his diary after the war as well, when he was back in Hannibal with his parents and his sisters and wondering where to go from there. He met Mother in church. He didn't mention that in his diary, though. He wrote about her only when he already knew her a little. “I don't know what it is,” he put down in his slightly cramped hand. “When I'm with Vivian I have a feeling in my chest that I can't name. It's a tightness, and I have a notion that she can relieve it.”

Did she? He looked contented enough, despite the limitations of twin beds and the lipstick she always put on before coming downstairs in the morning, marking the end of kisses for the day. She could receive them, of course, and would always proffer a cheek when any of us came home. She'd pat me on the bottom instead. I don't remember her kissing Poppa, though.

“I have a feeling in my chest.” It was so strange reading those words, knowing that when he wrote them he hadn't declared himself to her yet, knowing that by the time I read them hundreds and thousands of moments had passed between my parents that I had never perceived and would
never understand, or even accept. Their relationship seemed to function along the lines of a pattern. To learn that, at least for him, it started with the shortness of breath and a desire for sweet relief, well, I had to think about that. And when I thought about that, standing there three years ago in my dining room next to the box of Poppa's things I'd opened on the table, I got angry. She just hadn't appreciated him. When I think of my young self sitting on the back seat of the Studebaker, watching him drive so elegantly around town while she looked out the window and commented on the houses, I know I was in the right place. I used to put my hand on his shoulder to remind him I was
there.

W
here'd I put the crossword puzzle? I thought I'd finish it while I ate, but I couldn't find it, not the one I was working on anyway. Where is it? God. It's always like this. Stupid, Lillian. Stupid. Think. Focus.

In high school I was never one to do my homework with the other girls. I have no idea how they got it done that way. You have to be quiet, sharpen your pencils, get the right paper, put your head down. I did homework in my room in the late afternoon, after a Coke with Mary in the kitchen. Poppa would come home around five thirty, unless he was traveling, and there was usually a good forty-five minutes when I'd be composing something at my desk and Poppa would be in his office next to my parents' bedroom calculating something, looking at what he'd written on the little pieces of paper he always had folded in half in the pocket of his shirt. I felt a real freshness in my brain then. A clarity of focus. A breeze. Whatever I wrote was speedy and solid. Whatever I read made sense. I came up with ideas for term papers. I drew accurate graphs. Then Poppa would clear his
throat. Funny how men do this when they stop concentrating, at the end of a project. This was the sign. It was time for him to make drinks. Mother was waiting downstairs with her hand already curved to receive her bourbon. That's how she looked, sitting in the sunroom at the end of the day, lipstick renewed, waiting for things to happen the way they were supposed to happen.

At dinner, I know Poppa liked me to talk about my schoolwork, but he'd always offer Mother an opportunity to talk first. “Shall we find out what Vivi Anne has to say about the world today?” he'd ask me, and I'd consider the question, and nod. Her name was Vivian. I never asked him why he played with the pronunciation. I assumed it was because she wasn't the kind of woman you tickled with your fingers. It was a funny way to tease and show respect at the same time, calling her Vivi Anne, letting her have the floor first, listening as if he truly cared or would remember which store was having a sale.

I couldn't really think without Poppa nearby. It was as if my brain were a boat, and when I left home for Vassar I left my anchor behind rather than pulling it up and dropping it in the new place. My brain kept sneaking out of the harbor. It all had to do with hands. Phone calls and hands.

The calls started on Wednesday evenings. Just a couple
would come in, usually for the same girls, but sometimes there was a surprise, and then on Thursday evening there were lots more, and any girl without a date for the weekend would go to class on Friday morning with a heavy heart even though there was still time.

The phone was quiet for the first few weeks of my first year, so I spent most evenings in the library rather than listening for the phone at the entrance to the residence hall. I was there to study, after all. I'd signed up for more than the required number of credits, in order to do a double major—early childhood education and English literature. Lots of girls were doing a major and a minor, or even a major and two minors. But what kind of word is that,
minor
? A minor in religion, or philosophy? It's like taking only a thin slice of fruitcake. What if the cherry is on the other side of the cake and you never taste it? I was too hungry for that.

On the wall by my bed I'd stuck up a schedule I'd made for myself showing how many hours a day I needed to devote to each class, and it looked perfectly doable, and I threw myself into it with my sharpened pencils and my notebooks and my belief that pretty little Vassar meant me no harm. But then, after some of the girls took me along to a dinner and dance at Yale, the calls started coming in for
me as well. I'd try to study in the bedroom, but in fact I'd just be waiting like we all were, and my roommate, Ann, would start playing with her hair. She was a serious student. I couldn't understand a word of the economics books she loved so much. Well, no, I could, but my eyes crossed, literally crossed, when I took a look at them. That made her laugh. Ann. Nice girl. She was one of the earliest women on Wall Street. She's still there, I believe. J.P.Morgan, I think. She had long straight hair, and was fond of saying she couldn't do a thing with it, and on Wednesday and Thursday nights while we waited to hear the phone ring, she'd start by taking it out of its ponytail while we were studying, and then inevitably she'd twirl it around her finger, and that would distract us both, and one of us would pull out a magazine to look at styles, or she'd stand in front of the mirror and I'd watch her, and we'd both imagine her on a date.

The phone calls threw off my study schedule completely. I told myself to get up early on Sundays and go back to the library. Sometimes I was able to, sometimes not. I told myself to keep to the evening study schedule, to let someone else take any call that came in for me and take a message, and sometimes I was able to, but I'd come home early. Sunday nights I fell asleep in the stacks.

Hands. Yale men knew where to put them. First date: elbow, early in the evening, on the way into a restaurant; between the shoulders, lightly, on the way out. Second date: small of the back. Just a tad possessive, just a tad suggestive, with an I-know-which-way-to-take-us quality that was always encouraging, even when you had an inkling it was insincere. Third date: waist, or hand. Neck. Neck when they kissed you, fingers meeting on your nape, under your hair, thumbs in front of your ears. Eventually: hip, thigh. That was nice. It wasn't supposed to happen too early, and it was supposed to happen in conversation, maybe when they leaned toward you to deliver a punch line or point, so that it wasn't too raw, too frank. The ones who barely touched me at all on the first date—holding a door with no need to put a hand on me to usher me through it—reminded me of Poppa, and I liked them for it, but not if it lasted too long.

Come to think of it, when Poppa held a door for Mother and me, we'd both let Mother go through first, then I'd go through, and he'd touch me. He always touched me when I went through a door.

There were other hands distracting me, early in my second year, when those of us studying early childhood education were placed in nursery schools for experiential training. When I got back to our room at the end of those days, I was
the one standing in front of the mirror, playing with my hair, picking the glue out of it, showing off the finger paint under my nails, telling stories of adoration and frustration, but most of all remembering the little hands on me. It felt like all the energy of the world was coming to me through the tiny palms the children would place on my calves to steady themselves or get my attention. I was supposed to put them down at naptime and teach them to calm themselves, but I couldn't. I'd keep one or another in my arms on some pretense—I couldn't get a shoe untied, I needed to wipe a runny nose—just to feel them go a little heavier in my arms and see that final instinctive reach toward my neck as I put them down and they allowed sleep to take over. Their hands gave me goose bumps.

There was one little girl named Joan. She was the tiniest one in the group, with soft dark ringlets that reminded me of me, and a methodical approach to playing that kept her one step behind the other babies. I was standing in the doorway one breezy October day, watching the others play on the little playground and also waiting for Joan to finish lining up all the dollies so they could go to sleep. A few times before, she had just pushed unsteadily past me through the door when she was done, but this time she patted the back of my knee, and when I turned around she had her arms up
and her head tipped all the way back, throat exposed and pulsing, the way little children do to signal that they really mean it and they'll probably make a fuss if you don't agree. It was as if we'd already been communicating, and she was just taking it up a notch. “Oh, sugar,” I said as I picked her up and sat her on my hip. “You all worn out from putting your babies to bed?” She just looked out at the playground, and seemed contented to stay and look, her body still, not leaning forward and kicking the way some of the children did to make you go somewhere. So I looked too. We stood in the doorway like mother and child, like wife and child looking out from a home, keeping a watchful eye on the rest of the family playing. Her left arm was behind my shoulder, and after a while I felt her little fingers idly exploring the hair at the back of my neck.

Goose bumps.

We all had a meeting with the head of the department at the end of that term to discuss the feedback from the teachers we had been assisting, and to receive our next assignment. Her name was Mrs. Wade. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and no makeup at all. She resembled an aging movie actor, Spencer Tracy maybe, in sort of the way Margaret Mead's face was a practice run for Anthony Hopkins. She had square gray teeth, and bright eyes. She told me she'd
received a glowing report and that I was clearly well suited to the purpose of helping children learn and grow. There was a little bit of concern regarding my use of time.

“You mean I wasn't efficient?”

“More that you didn't check the clock quite often enough,” she said. “Do you recall having to be reminded that it was time for another activity, or lunch, quite a lot?”

I thought. “Maybe. A few times. But Mrs. Wade,” I said, “the babies! I couldn't take my eyes off them to look up at the clock; they were just too sweet and interesting. I didn't want to miss a single thing. If they could ring bells or something when we are supposed to change our activities, then maybe I could be more attentive.”

Mrs. Wade laughed. “An excellent idea, Lillian. It's interesting that you refer to them as babies, dear. The youngest would have been two, I'm sure.”

“Babes in the woods, then,” I said. “Innocents.”

I saw Mrs. Wade's eyebrows twitch down at this, but she smiled again. “Fair enough. Anyway! Well done. And on to a kindergarten class now, where the youngest will be five, and most of the children will be six.”

Suddenly my tongue tingled with a panic I usually reserved for standing up to speak in class. “Can't I stay at the nursery school?” I blurted.

“No, dear. You've got to do next term in a kindergarten, just like all the others.”

“How about a couple of hours a week?”

Mrs. Wade folded her hands on the desk in front of her. “What for?” she asked.

“For the babies,” I said. “We know each other now. Won't it, I mean, isn't it hard for them to adjust to new people all the time?”

“Hard for the children?”

“Yes!”

“It would be difficult if their teacher changed every term, yes, but as it's only the assistant that changes, and they know it's going to happen, it seems to be fine. Anyway, Lillian,” she said, unclasping her hands and pulling my file into her lap, “I can't see a gap in your schedule here that would allow for extra time in a nursery school.”

I don't remember what was said after that. I returned to my room with a piece of paper in my hand, giving me the details of my kindergarten assignment, but I couldn't look at it. I stood and stared out the window. Did six-year-olds hang on to your neck? I didn't think so. I couldn't bear it.

That evening in the library I tried to continue with my reading of
Methods for the Study of Personality in Young Children
, but all the flavor had gone out of the meal. The
next morning, I didn't get up. I think I went to class once or twice in the next two weeks, but I wasn't really there. One afternoon Ann came and found me sitting under one of the big trees by the chapel. When she pulled me to my feet and put her arm around my shoulders I realized I was cold. I don't know how long I'd been sitting there. It was hard to think.

I went home to Columbia and started at the University of Missouri. Just English lit this time.

I'll have children of my own,
I told myself.
I don't need to take care of other people's.

My class schedule didn't allow me to be home at the same time every day. I had to study after dinner, which worked very well when Mother was watching television in the sunroom and Poppa was reading the evening paper in his chair in the living room. There were times when I would sit down with my books and sigh and run my hands through my hair before starting, and Poppa would get up, come over to where I was sitting, slide off my shoes and massage my feet. He didn't slide both my shoes off at once. He'd take one off and massage that foot, and the other foot would stay on the floor like a girl on the edge of a dance, waiting to be noticed and chosen. With both thumbs he'd press the ball of my foot, spreading my toes out slowly. He
squeezed both sides of the foot from the top, from the ankle and toward him to the toe. He'd always finish by placing the mount of Venus of one hand against the arch of my foot, and curving his other hand over the top of the foot, closing me in, warming my blood, always taking care with every movement.

Did Mother let him do that for her? I think there was quite a lot Mother didn't let Poppa do. Poor Poppa. His hands were so strong and sensitive. He didn't talk when he massaged my feet. He just looked at them.

The way I saw it, the reason we didn't really suffer during the Depression was that my father was so handsome. As a silver salesman in Missouri and beyond, he shouldn't have been able to make a good living. Doors shouldn't have opened to him, but they did. I'm almost sure Poppa was faithful, but the image of him in the sitting rooms of pretty Missouri housewives, giving and receiving the flattery and pleasure that weren't common currency at home, was too sweet to discard. After all, it was thanks to them that Mother had the house, the Wedgwood, the bourbon, the cigarettes, the weekly dress money, the silent grand piano. George Junior's piano. I had piano lessons too, of course. Dance lessons first, though, to go with the ringlets. Mother insisted I was going to be the next little Shirley Temple.
Later there was piano, and singing. I had perfect pitch. I've lost it by a half step lately, but it's a perfect half step. So I could play piano, and did, but only when I was sure Mother was upstairs or out and wouldn't come and stand in the bay of the baby grand and get all mushy about how George Junior used to play whenever she asked him to, even for guests, before he left for California.