That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister (5 page)

“Yes, you did, Bam. We’ve been trying to tell you.” What was it about Bammy and irons?

“Well, how can we go out to dinner in wrinkled dresses?”

In the small Irish towns we were traveling in, there were no converters to be found. No one seemed to notice we were disheveled.

When we finally flew out of Shannon Airport toward New York, Bammy let out a long sigh of relief. “They need to come to our country and taste
real
food,” she announced.

Mom and Dad had been thrilled with the whole trip, power outages and all. For our family, it was the adventure of a lifetime. Now it was time to attend to other family needs, most especially, Irene’s crossed eyes, which had never straightened by themselves. Irene was now ten and the doctor said it was a good age to get her eye muscles tied surgically. The operation went well. She stumbled around the house with her eyes bandaged for a week. When they took the bandages off, she still wouldn’t open her eyes. Then, hours later, at dinner, we watched her slowly blink them open. She looked around at all of us. “Hi!” Dad said to her. She looked at each one of us as if seeing us anew. Maybe she was. “Where my glasses are?” she asked.

“You don’t need them anymore, sweetie! Can you see us better?”

“I don’t need my glasses?”

“That’s right.” We were looking closely at her eyes, which indeed were straighter, but not perfect. At least she looked a little more normal, even if she didn’t act it.

Neither, for that matter, did I. To most kids, normal was being a cheerleader, not on the staff of the school newspaper. Normal was hanging out together at Farr’s Ice Cream Shop, not curled up alone on the couch reading humorists such as Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman or the western writer A. B. Guthrie Jr. Normal was going out with football players, not guys on the newspaper staff, all of whom came up to my chin and wore big horn-rimmed glasses. Besides, they were horrid dancers. I wanted Fred Astaire.

As I went from twelve to sixteen, I gained the wisdom and maturity to handle boys and their attitudes toward my sister. Besides, my pimples went away, the boys got taller, and all the other girls got breasts in some measure or another. I was more comfortable in my own skin.

When a boy came to the house now, it was still the same routine with Irene. “Hi! Where’s your mommy? Wanna talk to my doll?” If the boy turned away from her and pretended not to hear, I smiled and said she had some special ways of communicating. I would never say, in front of her, that she was brain-damaged. I also would not go out with that boy again.

If he answered her question as if this were par for the course, I’d think he had potential. It must have been a disquieting experience for a boy to cross my threshold, to have to explain where his mommy was, and talk to Irene’s favorite, disheveled doll; but some, like handsome, articulate Bob Coles, actually smiled and answered. Bob, who wanted to be a journalist, felt comfortable around us all. Mostly, though, the ones who were nicest to her were the short nerds. They were my pals, but not glamorous material.

After a steady diet of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Gregory
Peck on the movie screen, I really wanted more. After all, my idol was Esther Williams, and I swam just like her, I thought. I deserved a romantic hero, big and bold and brawny.

After hinting broadly to everyone I knew, I managed at last to convince a cheerleader to take pity on me and line me up with the strong, tall, sexy Marlowe Smith. At last I was going to be squired about by the hunk I knew I deserved. When he picked me up, there was Irene and the rest of my family. My father shook hands with him, Mother and Bammy looked him up and down, and then Irene asked, “Where’s your mommy?”

Marlowe flinched. He turned away from them and whispered to me, “What is wrong with her?”

Now of course this was a sure sign that I should dump this loser, but this was the captain of the football team! The only boy in the school taller than me! I would have eloped with him that evening if he’d asked.

More comfortable in my own skin. Wisdom and maturity. Right. Except sometimes.

Smiling and simpering, I said, “Never you mind about my sister, Marlowe. Let’s go to the movie,” and away we went. I felt completely glamorous. I had a fine time at the movie and, later, being seen with Marlowe by many classmates at the ice-cream store. He wasn’t the best conversationalist, but I didn’t care. I talked enough for both of us.

As we walked up to my front door at the end of the evening, Marlowe shook my hand very formally, and then said, “Terrell. Can I ask you a question?”

My mind raced. Was he going to ask me out again? The school dance was coming up! My heart was pounding. Or was he going to ask about my little sister?

“Sure, Marlowe! What?”

“How come you use so many big words?”

My heart sank. I thought back on our date. What on earth had I said? Marlowe had muttered only a few words the whole night, most of them one syllable. My glamorous social future was over. “Well, Marlowe, I guess that’s just how I am. I am so sorry!”

He shrugged, pulled his East High letter jacket tighter against the winter night, turned on his heel, and left me forever. I was devastated.

For about a week. Then I went back to the short nerds who could speak in long, thoughtful sentences as we put out the school newspaper together. Besides, we were all studying so hard to get good marks for our college applications, I didn’t have much time for romantic longing.

Dad had always admired Stanford University, and hoped I’d apply there, so I did. By early spring quarter of my senior year, I got the news. My best friend Jeannie and I would both be going to Stanford.

One day I was asked on a date by Paul Dougan, who had grown up in my neighborhood and was already a sophomore at Stanford. When he walked in the door, Irene was right there with her perennial question. He answered in all sincerity, “Where’s my mommy? My mom is just up the street on Fourth Avenue, Irene. We live four blocks away. Would you like to come and meet her?”

Bammy, who was standing in the hall too, said, “Oh my heavens, you’re Helen Dougan’s boy. Why, I’ve played bridge at your house many times! I’ve watched you and your brother since you were babies. I just love your mother. Come right in and have dinner with us.”

When Paul took me to our local dance pavilion at Lagoon, and
we danced to Louis Armstrong and his band, I found that his box step lacked a certain rhythm. In fact, he stepped on my feet every other beat and seemed to have adopted a sort of whirling step that had a life of its own and made us both completely dizzy. I was about to suggest we go get a lemonade when the Armstrong band broke into a great swing number. Suddenly Paul took my hand and turned into Fred Astaire. “How do you know how to jitterbug?” I asked, full of wonder. “Arthur Murray!” Paul answered. “Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow.”

We were soul mates right then and there. He was funny, very smart, loved by all his friends, and best of all, he was six-foot-one.

At Christmas, he showed up at our door with a large gift for me under his arm. It was a big doll, an Emmett Kelly clown, which threw Irene into complete raptures. She held the doll all Christmas Day. “Wow, this thoughtful guy really must be in love with me,” I thought to myself. Paul took me to a movie that night, and Callie, the girl in the box office who also worked at the gift shop, handed us our tickets and asked, “Hey, Paul, I loved that clown you bought at the store yesterday. Did you ever decide which of your girlfriends to give it to?”

Paul pointed at me, totally chagrined.

“Okay, Mr. Romance, let’s go see the movie,” I told him.

We’ve told this to our daughters more times than they cared to hear it.

A
t East High, I was a reasonably outstanding student. At Stanford, I dog-paddled in a sea of incredibly outstanding students. My three swim trophies were dwarfed by the hundreds of trophies of my fellow students, one of whom was already on the U.S. Olympic Team. My roommates were brilliant. One roommate, Joan, never went to class at all. She never bought a textbook: she just borrowed mine the night before a test, lit a cigarette, thumbed through the book, and got an A the next day. I slaved away in the stacks, trying to absorb all my subjects, and for the first time I sort of knew how Irene must feel around the rest of the world. I never failed a class, and got Bs and Cs, but I felt totally out of my element. And the partying at night simply shocked me. Paul took me to a fraternity party, where two of his frat brothers got roaring drunk and put their fists through all the windows at the hall they’d rented. I was horrified. Besides, it wasn’t any fun.

Then we’d go to the Mormon parties, where we’d play musi
cal chairs in couples, where you sat on the boy’s lap as the chairs got pulled away. We played relay games: pass the lifesaver on a toothpick using just your lips. Or pass the orange holding it under your chin, no hands allowed. A marvelous game. No alcohol. Great music. Lots of fun.

I went out with other boys. They seemed on another planet to me, and I must have to them. I was so straight, did not drink, and kept all dorm rules that said I had to be in by eleven, or midnight on weekends. This is what happens when you grow up Mormon in Salt Lake City. We flinched at the thought of overdue library books. We never jaywalked. We followed all the rules. We shared the same history, spoke the same language.

It was Stanford’s language that was passing strange. I went to one football game with Paul. At the gate he said, “Well, see you after the game.”

“Why after the game? Aren’t we sitting together?”

“No. I’m in the card section.”

“The card section! Where you hold up cards? I would love to do that! I hate football! Give me a hot dog and put me in the card section and I will be a happy camper!”

“Only men get to work the cards.”

Only men got to be in fraternities at Stanford, too, in those years. Plus, they had a motto, those adorable Stanford boys: “Nine out of ten girls are beautiful. The tenth one goes to Stanford.” Because they couldn’t stand our competing with them in class, the boys tended to date girls from San Jose State. My friend Jeannie came to me in our sophomore year and said, “Let’s go home. I hate this place. Paul will be graduating and going into the navy, and then who would you want to go out with anyway?”

She had a point. Besides, our education did not seem any bet
ter than what our friends were getting back home. As undergraduates, especially the first two years, it seemed we were getting very few full professors, just teaching assistants. Jeannie wanted to join a sorority and have some fun for just a few minutes. I didn’t blame her. Thus we put in for transfers out, to the horror of the Stanford staff. My counselor suggested I take a psychological test to see if I was mentally competent. Anyone who didn’t like Stanford must have a screw loose. “Anyway,” he said, “it will show you where your skills might lie for a future career.”

So I took the test. My highest skill, it said, would be as an elevator operator.

I didn’t mind. I had been doing a little work on my own. I was already a college correspondent for
Good Housekeeping,
and I’d entered the
Mademoiselle
magazine College Board contest. If you won, you got to go to New York and guest-edit the magazine with their staff for a month. One of my projects had been a short story. Just after I put it in the mail, my Stanford creative writing teacher called me in to his office for a consultation. “This is a terrible story,” he said. “You’ll have to do this assignment over. All this shows is the cruelty of children. And then it ends with a funny story.”

I was feeling faint. “Well, yes, that’s what I meant to show,” I said.

“Well, it’s stupid. It tries to make you cry and laugh all at the same time. What do you expect the reader to do? Cry or laugh?”

“Well, both. That was my thought,” I told him. “I just put it in the mail to the
Mademoiselle
contest.”

His eyes got wide, and then narrowed meanly. “If you had the unmitigated gall to submit that to
Mademoiselle,
you really are dumber than I thought.”

I felt my eyes well up with tears, and I promised I would write him something else. Spring quarter was almost over, and I had to get a grade from him to transfer to the University of Utah. I stumbled back to the dorm, blinded by tears, wondering what else to write. I had just written of my experiences on Tenth Avenue as a child. I must be a horrible writer and had never known it.

I struggled for two weeks, in between classes and other studies, to write a better story for him. But I liked the one I had written and could not think what would please this man.

Then it arrived. Trembling, I opened Western Union’s yellow envelope. “Congratulations. You have been chosen as a 1959 Guest Editor. Please make arrangements to be in New York by June 1. And tell us whom you would like to interview. Sincerely, the staff at
Mademoiselle.”

When I called
Mademoiselle
I got Lisa Hopping, who had been one of the judges. “Oh, Terrell!” she said happily. “I’m so glad you can come.”

“Tell me, please, which of my four projects convinced you to choose me?”

“Oh! Your short story, hands down! We’re not going to publish it or anything. I really just wanted to meet you. You sound fun. Now, tell me who I can work on getting for you to interview?”

“Would Danny Kaye be too much to ask for?” My father and I worshipped him.

“I’ll see what I can do. See you in June!”

Then I went to each of my instructors and arranged to take my finals early, because I had to be in New York before finals week. When I got to my creative writing teacher, he seemed
both stunned and furious. I told him time was running out to write him another story, and as a matter of fact, that very story was what had got me to be one of the twenty winners.

“Go!” he said bitterly. “I’ll just take that story as your submission to me. Just go!”

And he turned his back on me and stared out the window. I later learned that this man had received an award for his novel manuscript, but could never find anyone who wanted to publish it.

Paul drove me to the airport to fly to New York. “Now how much money do you have in your wallet?” he asked.

I looked. “Twelve dollars.” I thought that was quite a bit.

“Oh
that’s
good,” he laughed, reaching for his wallet. He handed me $60. “You’ll have to walk to the hotel unless you take this.”

I don’t know why I never thought of that. Paul just kept on looking more and more like a fellow you’d want to have around. We hugged good-bye, and I climbed on the plane with another Stanford girl, Geri Wilder, who had also won the contest. We both opened and showed each other our second yellow telegrams. She was going to interview the actor John Houseman. Mine said, “Danny Kaye unavailable. Will James Thurber do?”

Thurber was one of my all-time idols. I had nearly passed out.

That month in New York dazzled all twenty of us guest editors from colleges around the country. We went backstage at
My Fair Lady
and got to try on their elegant hats. We were introduced to all sorts of actors and heads of corporations. The Field-crest Company gave us each an invitation that said, “Your transportation to our offices awaits you in the morning in front of your hotel.” When we walked out that morning, ten horse-drawn
carriages from Central Park were lined up, waiting to transport us down Fifth Avenue. Meeting my idol, James Thurber, gave me goose bumps. He had gone completely blind by this point and was gloomy. He asked what I wanted to be in life. “I’d like to be a homemaker and a writer,” I told him.

He said, “Humph. Every housewife has a novel in her apron pocket.” I shook his hand and slunk away. Never mind. What he contributed to American humor can never be diminished, and if he was a little grumpy in his old age, I totally forgive him.

We interviewed Samuel Goldwyn in his hotel room at the Sherry-Netherland. I asked him how he came to have the roaring lion as the logo for MGM films. He told us he had taken his daughter to the zoo just as he and his partners were starting up their company, and his daughter had been in awe of the lion that roared. “That’s what I wanted people to feel when they saw our films,” he said.

On my own I went to eleven shows on Broadway. We stayed at the Barbizon Hotel for Women; they had house rules for young ladies, to be in by eleven on weeknights, midnight on weekends.

It was years before I learned of the famous poet Sylvia Plath and
The Bell Jar.
When I finally read it, I realized she had had the same experiences at
Mademoiselle
just six years before I did. Where she was paralyzed with the choices of career before her, and despondent at the materialism of all the goodie bags we got, I was simply thrilled. They gave us clothing and cosmetics and all sorts of gifts. Apparently this depressed Sylvia so much that she went up on the roof of the Barbizon Hotel and handed all her beautiful new clothes to the wind.

She went on to become one of the most famous, and probably the most tortured, women in American literature. In the midst
of her career, with two little babies in their cribs upstairs, she put her head in the oven and killed herself. I thought maybe the most brilliant writers might just be the most unbalanced, but then I realized Joyce Carol Oates had also been a
Mademoiselle
guest editor, so it appears you can indeed be brilliant and lead a satisfying life.

I dated two boys from Salt Lake while in New York. There was so much to do I was almost too excited to sleep, and came home with a galloping case of mononucleosis. Paul came back from a geology field trip to find me bedridden.

He brought dinner over and served it to me like a professional waiter. I felt completely cared for. We couldn’t kiss, because of my disease. He didn’t care. I put my head on his lap and we watched television after his dinner of steak, baked potatoes, and pecan pie.

Bammy was really impressed. “That,” she said, “is a man you can count on.”

It seemed so comfortable, and so right, to both of us. Paul told me later he told his mother that he was planning to ask me to marry him, and she thought for a minute and then asked, “Is she healthy?” Looking at our family, with Mom’s arthritis, Dad’s poor hearing, and Irene’s damaged brain, you would have to wonder.

Just before Paul left for his stint in the navy, he took my parents and me to lunch and asked them for my hand in marriage. They hugged him. They knew he was a man of substance and character. He gave me a beautiful diamond, but we put it away until we could see our future, and the best time to announce our engagement. If his navy stint kept him on the ship for two years, I could keep the diamond in my drawer, go to parties with
friends, and finish college. But he thought his duty would not be on a ship. He would let me know the minute he found out.

My friend Jeannie and I had felt we were missing out on fun at Stanford, and sorority life appealed to us. We went through rush at the university and each pledged different sororities. Jeannie thought it was all quite wonderful.

It turned out I absolutely hated it. Sorority life as a junior, after the rigors of Stanford study, left me feeling just as alienated as I had on campus at Stanford, but in a different way. I was a pledge with girls two years younger. Their idea of fun was kidnapping the older members and hiding, giggling all the way.

One of the actives they kidnapped was my old skating partner, Lynne. They took her to a warehouse, tied her to a chair, and put lipstick all over her face. They thought this was hysterically funny. When it was all over, I kept trying to apologize to Lynne, as I had inadvertently led them to her, but she was being whisked off in another car. I told my pledge friends to drop me at my house. Once inside my own home, I burst into tears. Irene came over and watched me. “What happened?” she asked.

“I don’t like sororities,” I told her. That seemed to be the easiest way to explain.

She went to her room and brought a doll out for me to talk to, in case that might help. I tried to hand the doll back, but Irene said, “You have her sleep with you tonight.”

I actually preferred the doll to the pledges.

The next day I called two of my friends in my sorority and told them that I was going to resign. I just didn’t fit into their idea of fun. They came to my house right away. “Listen, Terrell, that was just one little isolated thing. Get over it! It’s all part of the system. It’s how people bond as friends!”

“Are you kidding me? Rush itself was the cruelest thing I’ve ever seen in my life! Sure, I got invitations in
my
envelope every day. I’ve lived here forever and people know me. But the girls who came from out of town would find their envelopes empty. They would just stand there, humiliated, tears running down their cheeks. I have never felt so embarrassed or sorry for anyone. It’s barbaric, you guys. It’s an exclusionary, stupid system. I want no part of it.”

One of them said, “You can’t stand for anyone to get left out of things, do you realize that?”

“That’s right. I can’t. Why do you allow it?”

“You’re nuts on this subject, do you know that? Life is full of exclusions. Private clubs. Private parties. Not everyone gets included in everything! When are you going to get over that fact?”

I looked up, and Irene was standing in the doorway. I don’t know if I had connected the dots yet.

Just then the doorbell rang. It was Lynne. I pulled her inside and put my arms around her. “Will you ever forgive me? What an idiotic mess I got us into. I had no idea—”