Ordinary Life: Stories

by Elizabeth Berg

  After we get our luggage, we see my parents waiting for us in the car outside. My mother is smiling and waving. As the kids run toward the car, I turn to Sam. “Here goes,” I say grimly.

  “You have a really terrible attitude,” he says. Then he yells, “Mary! Frank! How are you?” and pulls me toward the car.

  I climb into the backseat with the kids, smile hello. Maybe this time will be good, I think. My mother is so happy to see us. The food is always fantastic. I’m anxious to see my sister. I want to see if my brother-in-law likes this year’s joke present, red lace boxer shorts.

  When we arrive at the house, the kids go on their usual tour. My mother decorates everything—every single room in the house. Even the bathroom has holly wrapped around the shower rod, and a bath mat featuring a well-worn but eternally effervescent Santa Claus.

  My father, Sam, and I sit at the kitchen table. I pour coffee for all of us. “Get me some cream, Kate, huh?” my father says. I feel myself stiffen. “Sure,” I say. Maybe you’d like me to pour it in and stir it, too, I think. Then I decide that Sam is right—I do have a bad attitude.

  “So how’s the weather back home?” my father asks.

  Sam shakes his head. “You know California—same thing everyday. Nothing like Nebraska.”

  My father raises his eyebrow defensively. “No, we like seasons here.”

  Is this an argument already? I think. But if it is, Sam doesn’t take the bait. “Yeah, sometimes I really miss the seasons. It’s nice to have a white Christmas, that’s for sure.”

  “Even if the windchill factor is ninety below zero,” I say, and feel Sam kick me under the table. My father looks at me. “It is thirty-two,” he says. “Above.”

  My mother comes in the kitchen. “More coffee?” she asks. My father holds up his cup, not looking at her, and she fills it.

  “Sit down, Mom,” I say. “You have some.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she says. “How was the flight?”

  “Well, Josh threw up,” I say.

  “Yes, I just helped him change,” my mother says. “As soon as the load that’s in there now is done, I’ll wash his clothes.”

  “I’ll do it,” I say. “I need to do my blouse, too.”

  “Oh, that old washer is pretty temperamental,” she says. “And I’m going to be doing another load anyway.” I had forgotten how much my mother is like a jealous lover when it comes to her washing machine.

  I go upstairs to change, and then bring my blouse into the laundry room. My mother is there folding clothes, and holds out her hand to take my soiled blouse. “He still gets sick, huh?”

  “Every time,” I say. “Just as we land.”

  “He’ll outgrow it,” she says.

  “When?”

  “Soon, and then you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You’ll miss it.”

  I smile. She’s probably right.

  She starts the washer and continues folding. I sort the socks. “You used to throw up in the car all the time,” she says.

  “I remember.”

  “And you outgrew it.”

  “Yeah—when I was twenty.”

  “Well, there you are. Only thirteen more years.”

  “You’re such an optimist, Mom. Don’t you ever look on the dark side?”

  She looks at me. “What good would that do?”

  I throw the socks I’ve folded into the basket. “I don’t know. No good, I guess. I just wonder how you do it sometimes, that’s all.”

  “Do what?”

  I smile. “Nothing.”

  When I come upstairs, I see Sam in the living room, watching the kids look for their presents under the huge tree. I hear Josh say, “Here’s one for Mom.”

  “Where?” I say, and go to look at it. It is a blouse-size box, and I decide that a blouse is what’s in there. A blouse that says “nice girl” all over it, and that I will never wear. I am beginning to irritate myself. Why am I so nervous? I think, but I know why. I am nervous because I am waiting for something bad to happen.

  Christmas Eve. Dinner is at my sister Jen’s house. She has, as usual, knocked herself out: There is prime rib, but in case you don’t like prime rib there is a ham. There are mashed white potatoes, but if you don’t like those there are baked sweet potatoes. There are four different vegetables, canned and fresh. There are whole wheat and white dinner rolls. There are three kinds of pie: pecan, apple, and blueberry. “Only pie for dessert?” I ask.

  “I’ve got an ice cream cake in the freezer,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. She doesn’t know I’m kidding. I want to grab hold of her busy hands, say, “Oh, Jen, why do you do so much, try so hard? Are we all of us still afraid of him, still trying to do one thing that’s right enough to win something from him?” But I don’t say anything. I put on one of her aprons and ask what I can do to help. “You can finish stuffing the celery with cream cheese for the relish platter,” she says. “And then would you put it out on the table? The kids are starving.”

  When I put the platter down between the candles on the dining room table, it is descended upon by Annie and Josh and their cousins, Jen’s fourteen-year-olds, John and Lisa. They argue happily in their competition until my father asks loudly, “Can’t you take turns? Don’t any of you have any manners?”

  All four of them stop, frozen. Then Josh puts back the celery stalks he had in his hand. “You can have them, Josh,” I say.

  “That’s all right.” He walks away into the kitchen. The other kids wait quietly, until one decides to go first. Then the others pick up black olives. One each.

  My father switches channels on the television set, and settles into the recliner. I come into the living room and sit on the sofa. “How’s it been at work?” I ask. “Busy?”

  He nods, says, “Yeah,” but doesn’t turn his head from the screen. He is watching a variety show where the hostess, in a red, glittery gown, is singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I want Sam to be beside me, hearing this. I want him to get up and say, “Well, you’re absolutely right, Kate. We could have had new kitchen cupboards for what we spent to come here.” But Sam and my brother-in-law are busy in the basement trying to fix a snowmobile. They are drinking beer and laughing—occasionally the sound reaches upstairs, and everyone smiles. Well, almost everyone.

  I go into the kitchen. Jen is making gravy. My mother is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, while Josh leans companionably against her. “I got a phone call the other day, Josh,” my mother is saying. “It was a big company in New York City, taking a survey.” He smiles, looking down. He knows what’s coming. “Guess what they wanted to know?” she says.

  Josh’s voice is very low. “Who the best seven-year-old in the world is.”

  My mother feigns great surprise. “Why, yes! That’s it! And guess who I told them?”

  “Josh Perkins.”

  “Right again!” She kisses him. He flushes and pulls away from her. “I gotta go see what John’s doing.”

  My mother sighs, watching him walk away. “They grow up in one second flat,” she says.

  I sit down at the table with her. “Does Dad have to watch TV?”

  I ask her. “Does he always have to watch TV? Last year he had it on when we were opening presents!”

  “Oh, well, he doesn’t really watch it,” my mother says. “It’s just for the companionship.”

  “Why doesn’t he talk to his grandchildren for companionship?”

  She toys with the handle on her coffee cup. “He’s not too comfortable with conversation. Never has been. You know that, Kate.”

  Jen and I look at each other. “Let’s turn it off,” I say. “Let’s just go in and turn it off and ask him who he thinks will win the Super Bowl this year. What he thinks of the president’s foreign policy. If he likes the card Annie sent him—which, by the way, she spent two goddamn hours making!” No one speaks. I turn away to stir the gravy, which my sister has abandoned. “This is going to bu
rn, Jen,” I say.

  “He can’t be something different than what he is to please you, Kate,” my mother says. “You should try to look at his good qualities once in a while.”

  I turn around. “You make it so easy for him, Mom! You always have! But you don’t do any favors for anyone when you do that!”

  She looks at me with a pained expression. “Don’t, Kate. He’ll hear you. It’s Christmas Eve.”

  “I know,” I said. “You can tell. The TV announcer keeps saying so.” Jen leans hard against me. She’s right. There’s no point in this. “Oh, never mind,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I go into the living room to see what the kids are doing. Lisa is pulling out a battered red leather scrapbook from the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I recognize it as being my sister’s, from long ago. “This one’s great,” Lisa says. “This is from way before I was born, when Aunt Kate and Mom were little.” My father, I notice, has turned his head from a cereal commercial toward us. “Want to see?” I ask. He shrugs. I walk over to the TV and snap it off. He takes in a breath, starts to protest, but then walks over to the sofa and sits down heavily.

  I sit down beside him and we all begin looking at the black-and-white photos, held valiantly in place by a few remaining corner stickers. Lisa is narrator. “Here’s when Aunt Kate was a baby,” she says, and points to a picture of Jen as a five-year-old feeding me in a high chair. I am wearing a T-shirt and a diaper and Jen is in full cowgirl regalia. “Here’s the dog they had in the olden days,” she continues, and points to a sad-eyed boxer.

  “Schatzi,” my father says.

  “Pardon?” I ask.

  “Schatzi,” he says again. “That was her name.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say. And as I remember the dog’s name, I remember the house where we lived with her, and the smell of my room, and the off-limits paraphernalia on Jen’s dresser top, and my mother’s hairdo and sweater sets and her youth. And I also remember my father: lean and handsome and scary. If he told you to do something and you did it instantly, you were safe. If you said, “Just a second,” you were not. “He’s mean,” my friends would say, wide eyed, and I would look down and say, “I know.”

  Lisa is looking at a photograph of my mother with her mother. “Where’s your mother in here?” Josh asks my father.

  He pauses, then says, “She died when I was three.”

  “She did?” Josh swallows, stares at him, then at me.

  “But she was very sick,” I tell him. “She had a disease they couldn’t cure then. But they can now.”

  “Oh,” he says. Then he looks at my father and asks, “Did you cry when she died?”

  It is so quiet in the room. Now, I am thinking. Now.

  Then, “Dinner!” Jen calls and my father rises quickly and leaves the room. I start to follow him, but then detour to the bathroom, where I stand in front of the mirror and look at myself. And then I start to cry. I sit down on the edge of the bathtub and hold a towel to my face and cry with muffled gulps and I’m not even sure what it is I’m crying about. I hear a knock at the door, and stop crying. I splash cold water on my face and open the door.

  “Are you all right?” Jen asks.

  I nod. “My contact screwed up.”

  She smiles. “I don’t think so.”

  I sigh, and sit back down on the bathtub. “Oh Jen, I don’t know what I always expect. Maybe I’m a victim of too many Father Knows Bests. But I just wish … I don’t know.”

  “Well, I know. But there’s no point in asking people over and over for the impossible. He wasn’t perfect, Kate. But he cares.”

  “You sound like Mom! How do you know he cares? Where’s the evidence?”

  Jen sits down beside me. “It’s not so obvious. I mean, he didn’t come home every night and give us little toys and tell us we were wonderful.”

  “That’s for sure!”

  “But he can’t, Kate.”

  “Well, that’s not okay with me. I hate how he treats Mom. I hate how he treats my kids—and yours. I won’t let him do to them what he did to us.”

  She looks at me. “What did he do to us?”

  I snort. “Come on!”

  “No, what did he do?”

  “Well, how’s your self-confidence, for one thing? How long does it take you to trust men?”

  Jen folds her apron in on itself. “You know, I’m a little tired of the old blame-your-parents routine.”

  I look away, don’t say anything for a while. Then I say, “How hard would it be for him to act glad to see me when I come once a year?”

  “That’s a good question,” Jen says. “Why don’t you think about the answer?” She gets up and goes out the door.

  I straighten the towels on the rack. I hear a knock and say nothing. Then the door opens and my father is standing before me. “You planning on eating sometime tonight?” He is still so tall, his voice so deep.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s getting cold.”

  “I’ll be right there.” But I don’t move.

  “What’s eating you anyway, Kate?”

  I look up at him and wait for a long moment. Then I say, “All my life, I have been afraid of you.” He blinks, says nothing. “All my life, I have waited for some moment of tenderness from you. And I don’t remember a single one.” He turns around and walks away, closing the door softly behind him.

  I hear the clatter of silverware against plates, voices asking for the rolls to get passed. I should go out there, I think.

  After a while, I hear another knock. This time it’s Sam. When I see him, I fall against him. “Hey,” he says. “What’s going on in here?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. I wanted things to be different this year. I always want things to be different. And they never are.”

  “What were you looking for?” he asks. “What did you expect?”

  “I expected exactly what I got,” I say, and I can taste how I feel. “But I was looking for … I was looking for him to say he can’t stand how proud he is of me! That he held me as a baby and nearly burst inside! That he knows who I am, and he’s glad about it!”

  “And he has never done that.”

  “No!”

  “And Kate, he never will.” I start to cry again, and he sits on the toilet seat and pulls me onto his lap. He wipes my face off with toilet paper. He holds it up to my nose and says, “Blow,” and I start to laugh. “Do you know who Clyde Tombaugh is?” he asks and I shake my head no. “He’s the guy who discovered Pluto. He discovered Pluto, and then he walked down the hall to tell his boss, and then went to the movies. The Virginian. Gary Cooper.”

  “And?” I say.

  “And nothing. That’s all.”

  I tsk, get up off his lap. “Why did you tell me that? What’s your point?”

  He gets up and looks at himself in the mirror, plays with his hair a bit. “My point,” he says, turning around to face me, “is that it seems we all of us return to what’s familiar to us, no matter what. Even if it’s not so wonderful, it’s what we know. And it … I don’t know, it sustains us.” He puffs up his cheeks with air, lets it out, shrugs, and says, “See you in there. Better hurry up or all the gravy will be gone. And God, it’s good.”

  He closes the door behind him. I sit down on the floor, my back against the wall. I am remembering a Christmas that was bitter cold, when my father took me with him to feed the ducks. He does this every Christmas Day, brings a sack of cracked corn to the lake and feeds the ducks. I don’t know why I came that year, no one ever went with him. I was six. I sat in the car with the heater on and watched. I remember asking if the ducks’ feet hurt—no boots; such cold, blue ice; such deep snow. My father said no, they were used to it. And then he stood at the edge of the water, throwing out handfuls of corn. There was one duck, a female, who hung back from the others, and as a result got no food. There was something the matter with her—one wing lay at an odd angle against her. My father kept trying to reach her, but she wouldn’t come
close enough to get anything. He edged out carefully onto the lake. I saw his breath as he spoke to her. Suddenly, his foot went through the ice. The water was deep enough to soak a good ways up his leg. He looked down, then simply crashed through with the other foot. Then he leaned over to dump the rest of the bag before the duck, who finally got some corn. When he got back in the car, I stared at his legs for a while. Then I said, “You got all wet.” He shrugged, stared straight ahead. “Are you cold?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, though clearly he was. He backed the car up and started for home. “Your mother will have dinner ready by now,” he said. “I want you to wash up as soon as we get in.”

  I open the bathroom door and go out to the table. “Rats! I guess this means I can’t have your pie,” Annie says.

  “Hey, Mom, did you fall in?” Josh asks. “We thought you were a goner!”

  “No,” I say. “I had to do some things.” I sit at the chair that has been left empty, next to my father. I see his arm moving, see him passing the rolls toward me. I understand that he is made up of working cells, just like me—crowded and confused pieces of genius that have been tampered with and now, wounded, go along in the way that they are able. I move a little closer to him. “Pass the gravy, please,” I say.

  He hands it to me. “Here. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I say back, and I mean it.

  Regrets Only

  I was in the middle of making dinner when Laurence called. He told me he wanted me to meet his mother, who was in the hospital. Laurence is gay, his mother had a stroke, and he naturally assumed the two were inexorably linked. He wanted to pretend he’d had a major catharsis and was going straight. He said he was sorry he’d ever come out to her. It didn’t work. It only broke her heart. And now look, he said, now she’s had a stroke and maybe she’ll die. “And she’s just—well, she’s so nice,” he said. “I never told you much about her. She’s so innocent! Like once we were watching a thing on TV about crack addicts and she got really sad and said, ‘Why don’t they just go get an ice cream soda? What do they need with all this stuff?’ She was serious! Oh, I don’t know, she’s batty, I guess. But she’s so sweet!” He was nearly hysterical and I was trying to get the lasagna in the oven.