The Road Taken (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

By 1963 the safe world Peggy, and everyone else, had known was beginning to be turned upside down again. The war in Vietnam escalated, the Bay of Pigs invasion was a fiasco, and the Cold War escalated too. In the South there were peace marches, Freedom Riders, and murders. Martin Luther King spoke eloquently of the legitimate claims the Negroes (who were not yet called Blacks) were now demanding of their society; because of the color of their skin people were killed and gassed and attacked by dogs and fire hoses while trying to gain ordinary rights like voting and decent schooling. And then, in November of 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated by a mild-looking man named Lee Harvey Oswald. No one who was alive that day would ever forget where they were when they heard the news. Peggy was folding the laundry.

Now that things had returned to normal in her household, she was a full-time housewife again. Mrs. McCoo, who had been so devoted when Marianne died, was back to working her second job and making Peggy share her. Angel was two-and-a-half, and Markie nearly five. Only Peter, already his mother’s height at fourteen, was relatively independent, although he was still in many ways a child who needed supervision, and of course he had to be driven places. Having two little girls not yet school age was harder than Peggy had expected. Keeping up the house was a lot of work too. She seemed to do laundry forever, vacuuming was endless, cleaning up after people more so, but she prided herself on her cleanliness and skills. She went to the PTA, she attempted to read a good current novel every month, she tried out different recipes at dinner, she even made her own bread. Her children had lovely clothes, lots of instructive toys, and were relatively well behaved.

She and Ed watched the films of the assassination and the funeral on television. The riderless horse seemed to symbolize their country at this moment, the small fatherless boy saluting the coffin made her eyes fill with tears. Ed didn’t like Lyndon Johnson, so Peggy didn’t either, although she had little interest in politics. But the phrases “conspiracy theory” and “grassy knoll” were a part of everyone’s vocabulary now.

But there was something else that had crept into people’s vocabulary this year that, to Peggy, seemed equally ominous. It was “the Feminine Mystique.” The Betty Friedan bestseller posited that housewives were overeducated for their chores and frustrated in their lives, that women were victims of the media and the men who ran it, that the ways in which a woman was supposed to be “feminine” were simply ploys to enslave her. Peggy would have laughed at all of it, so ridiculous it seemed, but there was a minor revolution going on in her neighborhood. Her friends were declaring to each other that they were unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, even angry, and now they had discovered the reason why. They didn’t want to be housewives. They were not married to the house. The house’s wife? They had discussed philosophy at college and now they were scraping baby shit out of diapers. Yet, what else could they do? Work
and
take care of their family? Were there enough hours in the day?

Peggy remembered an ad she had seen from Ed’s agency one Mother’s Day, for frilly nightgowns and negligees. It read: “Show Mom she’s a woman too.” At the time it had meant nothing; it was cute. But, was she not a woman? Peggy thought now, in alarm. Just “good old Mom”? Taking care of her home and loved ones, doing it well, was what made one a woman, or at least she had always believed that. And mothers had power. She’d never been an educated woman, even though it was her own fault. God knows, her parents had tried hard enough, but all she had wanted was Ed. She had hated working. She had never wanted anything to do with a career, and actually, she felt sorry for Joan, who had an expense account now in her publishing job and was allowed to take authors to lunch. Joan was a misfit, and who knew if she would ever find a husband? She had a sex life, that Peggy knew, but what good was it if the men always left? Sometimes, Joan threw them out. But what difference did it make; she ended up alone.

Secretly, with annoyance and contempt, Peggy thought of her sister Joan as a slut. She herself had slept with Ed before they were married, against the standards of society, but they had been engaged and then they did get married and she had never been touched by another man, not before him and not afterward. If she hadn’t met Ed, Peggy was certain she would never have acted like Joan. She would have married someone else, married young, and she would have been a virgin until they declared their future.

Despite their mutual pretense, she and Joan were still not close. They were just too different, in too many ways, and always had been. Peggy was disturbed and threatened by the things people were saying now about the lives women were forced to lead—or had chosen! she thought angrily, no one
made
us do it—and Joan was delighted by the growing dissatisfaction and felt vindicated. Peggy hated how smug Joan seemed these days.

Sometimes Joan came for a weekend, inviting herself most times, and brought manuscripts to read, and gossip about literary people Peggy didn’t know and didn’t care about. Actually, she brought Peggy most of the novels Peggy read, because Joan could get all the publishers’ books free. Ed would leave the two sisters alone, pretending to be gracious about “the girls’ time together” but in truth delighted that he could watch sports on television or play golf or tennis with the men. Peggy showed off her home, her garden, her acre, her children. She wondered if Joan’s apartment was clean; she doubted it. But at least Joan’s fascination with Peggy’s two little girls never wavered. Joan could just sit and watch them playing. Sometimes the two children hugged, like a picture from a greeting card. It was a sight to make a mother’s heart proud, but apparently it inspired their aunt, too.

“Ah,” Joan sighed once, “they’re me and Ginger, aren’t they? Just closer in age.”

“You mean, Ginger and me,” Peggy said.

“Oh, never mind the grammar.”

“I’m talking about the likeness. Markie is a total duplicate of me.”

“And me,” Joan said, oddly. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

It was obvious what was the matter with Joan, poor childless thing. “You should have a baby of your own before it’s too late,” Peggy said to her.

Joan just shrugged and changed the subject. Her face snapped shut, like a door. “I guess you heard, Grandma’s getting forgetful,” she said. “Mom told me.”

“Yes,” Peggy said, “she mentioned something like that.”

“It’s pretty serious. Twice Grandma went out and forgot where she lived. She came over to Mom and Dad’s house. Apparently she recognized it. The second time Mom made her confess. Mom made her go to the doctor; she practically had to drag her. The doctor said she’d had a few tiny strokes. He said it’s more common than you’d think. No one knew about the strokes at the time, not even Grandma. It’s as if one day she was fine, feisty and independent as ever, and now all of a sudden she’s scared.”

“She’s seventy-eight, after all,” Peggy said.

“That’s pretty old.”

“Well, if she’s wandering around she can’t live alone anymore.” Peggy said. “They’ll have to get her a companion.”

“Poor Grandma.”

“Yes, poor old Grandma.”

They thought about this for a while in silence. “Do you think she could live with Mom and Dad?” Peggy asked.

“She’d give
them
a stroke. They’re too old already, and you can’t go back in life. What’s done is done.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s just . . . some people should move on. Mom and Grandma were always nice to each other, but they were never that close. Not enough to live together. Celia isn’t Rose’s real mother.”

“But Celia brought her up.”

“It’s not the same,” Joan said. Her voice sounded distant and Peggy supposed Joan knew things she didn’t know, but she didn’t care enough to ask her. It was ancient history by now.

“Then, maybe she could go back to live with Daisy in Bristol,” Peggy said.

“No, she’d hate that. Grandma is a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker.”

“Not if she doesn’t know where she is.”

“Peggy, that’s mean.”

“No, it’s realistic.”

“Anyway, Grandma insists she’s not that bad yet,” Joan said.

“I suppose she could live with Harriette,” Peggy said. “Grandma and Harriette have been getting along a lot better since Harriette married Julius.”

“That’s because they don’t see each other,” Joan said.

“It’s terrible to get old,” Peggy said. She was thirty-six, not young, but too far away from Celia’s predicament to take it personally. “I guess I’ll be an old widow myself some day,” she said, and she felt as if she were talking about someone else. “But I don’t want to think about it. I’m lucky I have three children. At least one of them will take care of me if I don’t nag them too much while they’re young.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Joan said.

Peggy glared at her. “Joan, you’re really mean. You’re meaner than I am.”

“Just realistic,” Joan said flatly, her tone imitating Peggy’s.

“At least I know you and I won’t live together.”

“Don’t count on that either,” Joan said, and laughed in a strange and phony way. What a weird one she was, Peggy thought.

Sometimes, when she had time to dwell on things other than her immediate family, Peggy wondered about Joan. There was a subtext under Joan’s banter that remained a mystery. Love and resentment; she could feel the two forces pulling them both. Some sisters were so estranged they never saw each other. Joan had gone away but she had come back. Obviously that was her own choice. The two of them were united by blood and nearly a lifetime of experience, but they were both aware that if they weren’t sisters they wouldn’t be able to bear spending these weekends in one another’s company. It was strange to look at someone you’d known almost all your life, who looked just like you, and whose thoughts and motivations and wishes were so different from yours that they were obscure.

If Joan was the liberated woman of the future, Peggy didn’t like it. The best thing about Joan was that she so obviously loved Markie. She loved Angel too, but Markie was her favorite. Sometimes, when Joan thought Peggy wasn’t looking, she just stared at Markie, as if the two of them were alone in another world.

But the motivation for that too, while it should have been normal, was obscure, and Peggy wouldn’t have known how to begin to analyze why she wasn’t simply pleased. Instead of being flattered, something about Joan’s fascination with Markie made Peggy uncomfortable, although she had no idea why. It wasn’t as if Joan was going to influence her. Peggy was much too strong to allow anything like that to happen to her daughter. Joan can look down on my life all she wants to, Peggy thought, but a part of her wants it too, I’ll bet, and that’s her problem. She chose her way.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The thalidomide babies were in the newspapers. The drug, which had been prescribed in England and Europe during the late fifties and early sixties for sleepless, nervous, nauseated pregnant women, had been rejected for approval by the FDA, and therefore kept out of America, by the resolute efforts of one stubborn woman doctor, Dr. Frances Kelsey. Now here were photographs of the children who had been born to these women: with flippers instead of limbs, arms and legs sometimes deformed, sometimes altogether missing; the fetuses’ little peripheral stubs stunted in the womb. Still too young to comprehend what had happened to them, the thalidomide babies were laughing and happy, crawling like seals, rolling like balls, always moving, in the way little children do. The older ones were being fitted with prostheses.

Some of them were blind, some were deaf, some had cleft palates; all had malformations of some kind. As ever, in the rush to make everyone healthy and comfortable, the people who discovered new panaceas also made various mistakes, quite often, in fact. The curing business was still primitive, although doctors who looked back at the limited knowledge of the past thought the present was full of wonders.

Ginger had thought she knew a lot about the sick. She had been around patients ever since she was a teenager volunteering with handicapped foundlings, and then in Warm Springs when she was a patient herself, and later in medical school when she worked at the hospital. She was an intern now, people called her “Doctor.” She had a stethoscope and a white coat. She was still sleep-deprived, working every day and every third night, looking at every kind of human misery. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, cancer, the people for whom surgery worked, quite simply, and those for whom it did not, no matter how complicated. People who would die without regaining consciousness and the ones who knew they were dying; and the ones who would have pieces of them removed over and over in order to try to live. Chemotherapy so strong it burned the skin and made the flesh turn black. She saw physical pain and emotional pain, bravery, terror, and resignation. She said good-bye to the patients who walked out of the hospital cured and she said good-bye to the patients who did not. She tended to deranged people and drug addicts and killers and attempted suicides. She caught babies when they were born and loved them all, even when their mothers didn’t.

And finally it seemed as if everything she had seen throughout her hospital years was falling into place. She wondered why she had not understood life before. The Ginger who had felt sorry for herself because she was in a wheelchair seemed immature. It was not an easy situation, but it was, by and large, manageable. She had seen so many sick people, so much death and suffering, that she had begun to think she was actually lucky. She was intelligent and productive and immersed in work, she saw her future as something both predictable and a glowing surprise. Paralyzed legs were a minor disability. Chris had known that for far longer than she had.

She had not gone to his wedding, even the thought was too painful, but she had sent a gift: a silver picture frame, in which, she supposed, he would put a photograph of himself and his wife, or perhaps their children when they had them. A picture frame was both personal and impersonal. He might remember that they had sent each other photographs through the years, and had framed them. But a picture frame was actually nothing; without a person inside it was merely a staring eye.

There was no picture in the frame she sent him for his wedding present because what she was saying was: “From now on your life is up to you.” As hers was up to her. The thank-you note, from both of them, was in Sue Sue’s handwriting. Of course. It hurt for only a little while.

To her amazement Chris still called her from time to time, just to say hello. She had been his best friend, but now Ginger knew his wife would have to be his best friend or the marriage would not work. Ginger had been about to tell him that, but then he had stopped calling. He had probably figured it out for himself, or perhaps Sue Sue was jealous. Ginger didn’t call him anymore, although she sent Christmas cards, and so did he. When she got the second card, the second Christmas, she realized how long it had been since they had communicated, and after a brief pang of sadness she went back to start her day.

That Christmas was sad for another reason: Grandma. She could not come to family functions anymore because she didn’t know where she was, she was in diapers as a precaution, although “precaution” was a family euphemism for necessity, and she often had to be fed. Sometimes she got angry for no reason, her mind like a spinning top. No one took her to have her hair colored, and it was white and sparse. Her dresses always had food spots on them. Celia had loved clothes, but now she didn’t care. She had been vain and cheerful, and now she had lost her dignity along with the memory of all the things she had been so interested in. No wonder she was angry—poor Grandma—although Ginger knew the anger was also part of the disease.

Grandma had had a companion for a while now, a woman who spent her time taking care of such people and living with them, but it was clear that sooner or later Celia would need either full-time nurses, which would be prohibitively expensive, or have to go to a home. Grandma had faded so quickly! Rose looked at suitable places near New York City, and Aunt Daisy, who seemed even more distraught than Ginger would have thought she would be, wanted Celia to come back to Bristol, to an old folks’ home there. Bristol was where she would be buried, next to Grandpa. Right now, Ginger thought, she’s only buried alive.

Ginger went to visit Celia before Aunt Daisy and the soon-to-be-discharged companion took her back to Bristol. Her things had been packed, some to go with her, some to go into storage, others to be given away. It was as if she were already dead. She couldn’t take a lot of things with her to the home; she would have a roommate and there simply wasn’t enough space. Ginger was glad Celia didn’t know what was happening. Somehow Celia had gotten it into her mind that she was going on a vacation trip, and she seemed pleased. Over and over she asked where she was going, and when they told her, over and over, she nodded.

“Little Ginger,” she said, peering, recognizing her. They were eye level, both in their wheelchairs. Ginger could see from her expression that Grandma thought she was still a child.

“Tiny little Grandma,” Ginger said, and choked back the lump in her throat.

“Did you sleepwalk again?” Celia asked.

“Sleepwalk?”

“Oh, yes. You like to wander away. You give your parents so much trouble.”

“Not anymore,” Ginger said.

“You’d better not.” Celia looked stern.

“I won’t.”

“I don’t have much truck for children who disobey their parents,” Celia said. “Lock you in your room is what you deserve. I told your mother, but she cried when you cried. Did you know that? She let you out.”

Ginger recalled those nights when she was a prisoner and her skin began to crawl. “That was a long time ago,” she said.

“Was it? I don’t remember. Don’t let Hugh come to visit me on my vacation. I have no use for him. Never did.”

“All right,” Ginger said.

“Something wrong with that boy,” Celia said. “Always has been. I can’t stand him.”

“Look at the beautiful apple I have for you, Grandma,” Ginger said brightly, picking it up from the plate on the table beside Grandma’s chair. “Would you like me to cut it up?” Celia nodded, distracted.

She always was kind of mean, Ginger thought, and felt better. She, being a grandchild, had seen a more good-hearted Grandma than perhaps her mother and Uncle Hugh had, but she knew the other part of Celia had always been there, not even really disguised. Now she felt some relief. She knew the meanness would stay till the very end, and thus she would be able to see Grandma as a person; she would feel sorry for her, of course, but would not feel compelled to idolize her just because she was sick and pathetic. In a way, it would make it easier to see her go.

For the first time Ginger wondered if this was a natural reaction. Is it perception, or self-preservation, she wondered now. Have I changed without noticing it and is this the way I’ve gotten to be because I see so much illness and suffering all the time? No, she thought, I haven’t changed that much. I’m not like a lot of other doctors I’ve seen. I still have feelings, I care. The doctors who don’t are cut off from their patients, and from other people, because they worked and studied so hard they never had a chance to develop social skills. They’re immature, and they may stay that way. They think they’re God. I know I’m nothing like that. I’m lucky just to be human. They would be lucky too.