Beginner's Luck

by Laura Pedersen

  However, this afternoon the Judge sits calmly in his armchair with the sun's rays sifting through the blinds to form bars of light across his chest and face. He vacantly stares at Court TV, though Ms. Olivia has muted the sound. I catch my mother furtively glancing over at the Judge whenever she goes to sip her tea.

  Ms. Olivia of course notices my mom attempting to evaluate the Judge. "It wasn't so bad up until this past fall, since he still delighted in his surroundings," she explains cordially. "He enjoyed watching the birds, strolling outside, and sitting and watching the fountain in the mall. The worst part is he no longer smiles, much as I try to engage him."

  "I'm sure the doctor will adjust his medication, Mother," Mr. Bernard says with encouragement.

  "I believe he's fading, dear," Ms. Olivia says and looks over at the Judge. "And maybe it's just as well. This is a life sentence that he shouldn't have to endure. He was a dignified man, your father."

  “Is a dignified man, Mother," Mr. Bernard quickly corrects her.

  But Ms. Olivia just sadly turns her head back to us.

  From my mom's point of view I expect it's a good thing that we have the Judge here. He lends an air of credibility to the entire household, even though he's out of it. And Ms. Olivia earns plenty of points, too. I'm always amazed at how easily grown-up women can converse with each other, even if they've never met before. It seems as if Ms. Olivia and my mom might chat until the six o'clock news comes on. They talk of children, husbands, how much the town has grown, and the proposed Grocery Depot that everyone has been fighting over and editorializing about the past few months. In fact, I start to worry that they're getting a bit too chummy—that they may start to conspire against me. Could that be my mother's hidden motive in coming over—to turn the Stocktons against me so I have to go home?

  However, I'm reassured by the knowledge that my mother has no idea what she's up against. I attempt to view Ms. Olivia through my mother's eyes, that is, if you don't know about the Druid Circle, pornography, Mexican Revolutionaries, Italian lover, and the like. Aside from all that, she seems fairly credible as a representative of what my father calls a Responsible Adult in Charge. And the fact that she's at least twenty years older than my mother probably helps, too. This way it doesn't appear as if I bolted my house for the home of a competitor. It's more like I moved in with an eccentric grandma.

  Had the lunch ended there things probably would have been fine. But when Rocky arrived home from church in his three-piece suit, mixed himself a Singapore Sling, and then actually served the luncheon, I think she would have felt as if she were being a good Christian by having us all committed.

  Chapter 33

  Stacked Deck ♥

  Immediately following lunch Mr. Gil and the Stocktons discreetly disappear, making the appropriate noises about errands to run and accounts to balance, and they leave Mom and me to the fresh apple dessert.

  "I haven't had real whipped cream since I was a girl," she says appreciatively. "My grandmother used to make it. She also made a delicious bread pudding. I wish I had her recipes."

  "It's not very sweet," I say.

  "No, but it has a lovely fresh taste. This is how we served it during the seventies when sugar became so outrageously expensive."

  "I prefer Cool Whip," I say softly so that Mr. Bernard can't overhear me in case he's spying from the foyer. Because these walls don't have ears, they have stethoscopes.

  "I see you still enjoy chocolate Yoo-Hoo," Mom says diplomatically.

  "Yeah. I haven't changed or anything like that."

  "I'm just pleased that you're back in school." But then she apparently remembers that I'm not exactly in school. "I mean, of course, that you'll graduate."

  "I don't gamble much anymore." I think this will please her. Besides, if anyone in my family is going to win the Breeders' Cup it's Mom, not me.

  "Oh, really? Why is that?"

  I'm reluctant to bother her with the details of being thrown out of the Indian casino, barred from the church poker game, and the fact that with the track closed for the season I'm pretty much out of options. So instead I just say, "I'm busy painting the interior and we're building a small greenhouse out in the backyard. And I'm doing a three-dimensional mural on the garage door."

  "I noticed that. Very interesting. It reminds me of the flexible wooden figures that art students use as models when they're learning to draw the human figure."

  "It's not done yet. I'd like to finish before it snows, because there's this silicon spray down at the hardware store that can be used to protect wood from the weather."

  "I'm pleased you're doing something with art. I've always said that you have a natural ability. I took some drawing classes as electives at Cleveland State and I think you're probably more accomplished now than I was in college."

  "Oh, I didn't know that."

  "It was just a hobby. And your father will certainly be pleased that you're no longer gambling. He heard a rumor at a Kiwanis meeting that you won eighty dollars from Father Costello. I told him I was sure that it was just a joke and that the pastor would never play cards, at least not for money."

  "He's not a very good poker player. I could teach him a few things."

  "Oh dear," she says, her worst fear confirmed. "I'd rather you didn't."

  "It's funny, because no one believes it, but the only reason I gambled was to make money. It isn't that I enjoyed it so much as, you know, that I was just good at it. It's not as if I'm addicted to it the way some people are."

  "You used to win more money from the baby-sitter playing Rummy Five Hundred than we paid her for watching you and your brother. It was embarrassing to have to warn her not to gamble with an eight-year-old."

  "She used to bite her nails when she was one card away from getting gin. And she held on to aces, even when it was obvious there was no chance of getting another one."

  "Speaking of money," says my mother in a failed attempt at nonchalance, "you mentioned that you found out who took the charity funds ..."

  "Um, yeah. But I can't say anything until it's all been resolved."

  "And you feel sure that you didn't do it? Because it's probably not too late to ..."

  "Mom, I don't feel sure... I know that I didn't do it."

  "Then I believe you. I must say that you've never really lied to me about anything. Well, except about playing hooky, of course. You weren't hard to handle so much as hard to find."

  Apparently this is supposed to be a compliment. "Thanks," I say.

  My mother proceeds to catch me up on the progress of my brothers and sisters. But it's not long before her agenda surfaces once again.

  "So then, now that all this nonsense is almost over with, when do you think you'll be coming home?"

  Just when I think that the reunion is going really well I realize that the entire afternoon has been a scam. "Mom ... I'm not coming home."

  "Now, Hallie, I've spoken with the school psychiatrist and they can prescribe Ritalin to help you concentrate."

  "I can't believe this!" I raise my voice. "You want to drug me so I can sit at a desk all day?"

  Now I'm irate. I push my chair back from the table, stand up, and almost hurl the china dish full of whipped cream against the wall. But it's not my home and so I don't.

  My mother is angry, too. She purses her lips and rises from the table. "You know, you can't just live here, Hallie .. ." She lowers her voice. "I'm sure they're very nice people and all that, but..."

  "But what?"

  "Well, you know, people talk ..."

  "Yes, Mom, and what are people saying? That you're a bad mother, that you can't control your children. Is that what you're worried people are saying? That your daughter is a dropout, a vagrant, a runaway, a thief?"

  "Hallie, you can't stay here!"

  "Oh, so you came to take me home, is that it? To your home."

  "There are things you don't understand, Hallie," she hisses back, as if she doesn't want to be overheard by our hosts.


  But I don't bother to lower my voice. "Things like what? That Mr. Bernard and Mr. Gil are gay? That they enjoy art and music and theater and watching old movies instead of frigging football games? That they eat hors d'oeuvres and drink Merlot instead of sloppy joes and Juicy Juice? Well, then maybe I'm gay, too!"

  "Oh, Hallie!" My mother's hands fly up to her face as if she's just witnessed a car wreck, and then she glares at me as if the home for unwed mothers or the women's prison farm would be a relief compared to this.

  "You'd better go," I say.

  "I didn't mean there was anything immoral about them—it's just not the kind of place for a young woman to be staying, that's all. You've been raised in a Christian home, Hallie—"

  "Is that what this is about? Religion? Are you afraid I'll become a Unitarian?"

  My mother keeps putting her index finger to her lips in an effort to signal that I should lower my voice, but this only makes me want to yell even louder. "Hallie, they're different from us," she says forcibly. "Surely you under—"

  "No, you're different from us," I shout back.

  Silently and hastily I escort her to the door, still seething. How did this go downhill so fast? Only ten minutes ago we were talking about the upcoming baby and Eric's football playoffs and Louise's latest boyfriend.

  Mr. Bernard appears in the front hall before my mother has even started her car. "I guess we won't be shopping for mother/daughter jumpers today. What a shame."

  "You heard?"

  "Enough to get the general idea."

  "I'm sorry." I'm truly embarrassed by my mother's remarks. However my anger disintegrates as soon as I see her car turn out of the driveway. Only now I feel as if I'm about to start sobbing. "I think I'll go for a walk."

  "Why do you want to go for a constitutional?" Mr. Bernard asks. "It's a cold and damp November day out there. It might creep into your soul. Take the QE2 if you need to set out to sea for a while."

  Mr. Gil arrives in the front hall and also appears concerned. "We're just about to watch a movie," he announces.

  Mr. Bernard joins in, "Yes, why don't you watch the movie with us?"

  "What are you going to watch?" I ask. Because I'm not sure that I'm in the mood for Rosalind Russell as the overbearing Mama Rose in Gypsy.

  "What movie were we going to watch?" Mr. Bernard asks Mr. Gil. It doesn't take a particularly high IQ score to figure out that this spur-of-the-moment entertainment is being introduced on my behalf.

  "Harold and Maude, of course," Mr. Gil replies as if he's been planning this all weekend.

  "Harold and Maude?" I say. "What's that about?"

  "It's hard to explain. But ..." Mr. Bernard lowers his voice and says conspiratorially, "There's always been a rumor that Maude was based on Mother. The writer met her at the Village Vanguard down on Bleecker Street in Manhattan during her hippie salad days in the sixties."

  "Are you kidding me?" I can't tell if Mr. Bernard is just trying to liven things up in order to get me interested in the film, like when he's selling his antiques and says he's quite certain that such and such a Sheffield plate was once owned by Jackie Kennedy and used in the White House.

  "I'll locate the videotape and see if Mother Jones can steal a few minutes away from coordinating her Chiapas firebrands," says Mr. Gil, as if it's a done deal. "Why don't you make tin roof sundaes?"

  But just then Ms. Olivia wanders through the front hall as she goes to prepare the Judge's medication and pauses next to our huddle. "Have I interrupted a Freemasons meeting?" she inquires. Then she shields her eyes with the back of her hand and says, "Don't let me see the secret handshake. Knowledge is responsibility."

  With Ms. Olivia getting in on the act, I know it's a conspiracy to cheer me up.

  "We're going to watch Harold and Maude. Why don't you and Father join us in the living room?" Mr. Bernard inquires enthusiastically.

  But she politely shakes her head no. "I'm on a deadline for Milky Way magazine. I'm taking a story I wrote a long time ago and updating it—you know, removing items like Grape Nehi, Etruscan vases, parlor games, and rumble seats. Otherwise, it's remarkable how little has changed. Though of course nowadays everyone has to jump up and fetch condoms. Making prophylactics sexy—that's the trick to writing erotic literature today."

  "Mother," Mr. Bernard exclaims, pretending to be shocked. "Amorous tales on a Sunday.”

  "Bertie, how many times have I told you to read the Bible? If you would, you'd find that the Old Testament is positively teeming with sex."

  Ms. Olivia says all this as she carefully counts out the Judge's pills onto the heavy oak dining room table. "Sarah giving a concubine to Abraham or Rachel giving a concubine to Jacob. Then there's Absalom, up there on the rooftop having sexual relations with not one but ten of his father's concubines, Lot committing incest with two of his daughters and still walking away from Sodom and Gomorrah unscathed. And when it comes to first-rate erotic verse, you have to search far and wide to beat the Song of Solomon."

  "I always thought there must be a reason that the acronym for Song of Solomon is SOS." Mr. Bernard says this and then heads toward the kitchen. "Would you care for an ice cream parfait, Mother?"

  "Not one of those dreadful white-on-white-on-white monstrosities you make. They're much too sweet."

  "But I love the way they look—tone on tone on tone in scalloped glass with a long silver spoon."

  "Just give me two dishes of vanilla, please, and I'll have it with Father. And put cherries on top."

  While they're busy bickering, I'm wondering how soon I can start reading the Bible, like maybe right after the movie. Ms. Olivia keeps a copy filed under "fiction" in her library, between the Bhagavad Gita and the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. I'd attended religion classes every Wednesday afternoon all through elementary school, and now I finally understand why we were only allowed to read the Children's Bible.

  "Hallie, please retrieve the parfait glasses from the top shelf of the china cabinet," Mr. Bernard instructs me from the kitchen. "And attempt to locate the long spoons in the silver drawer."

  "Let that be a lesson to you, Miss Hallie," Ms. Olivia continues.

  "Huh?"

  "People are too quick to condemn things of which they have no knowledge."

  "Oh, now I'm to be made an example of," Mr. Bernard says jokingly, his head inside the freezer.

  To me she says, "Hallie, pornography has been on the forefront of every major revolution. Just look at photography and the Internet."

  "Yes," says Mr. Bernard. "I'm certain that erotic narratives have saved countless lives." Mr. Bernard smiles sweetly at his mother and hands her two dishes of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and a cherry on top.

  "I didn't ask for chocolate syrup," Ms. Olivia objects, though she doesn't look at all unhappy about the added touch.

  "I know. I did it out of love," he says and gently shoos her into the hallway.

  "Hallie," Mr. Bernard says to me conspiratorially as we assemble the sundaes, "you and I both have mother problems."

  "I think mine is worse," I say. "My mom is trying to control my life. Yours at least allows you to do whatever you want."

  "I suppose. It's like what Lyndon B. Johnson said about J. Edgar Hoover when he ran the FBI—I'd rather have him inside the tent peeing out rather than outside the tent peeing in."

  "Then mine's more like Fiddler on the Roof," I say, referring to the musical we'd all gone to see at the revival house in Cleveland the weekend before.

  "How's that?" Mr. Bernard asks with great curiosity. "Is your mother keeping a kosher kitchen these days? Are you living here to escape an arranged marriage with the butcher?"

  "No. Remember that part where they say 'God bless the Tsar but keep him far away from us'? Well, that's pretty much how I feel about my mother right now."

  "Yes, of course," Mr. Bernard says with apparent delight as he scoops the ice cream. "We must remember to tell Gil. And of course those tsars got their just desserts."

 
At least Mr. Bernard and his mother have figured out how to compromise. In fact, they actually like living together. Sometimes they pretend not to, but anyone can tell that they really enjoy each other's company. My mother, on the other hand, is the most stubborn woman in the entire world. Even when I was little, there was just no chance of getting my own way with her. Strong-willed and stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. That's what she is and always will be.

  Then again, I'd heard the same thing said about myself.

  Chapter 34

  Risky Business «

  Even after the movie I can't sleep. Visions of Mom loom large and a feeling of disconnectedness overcomes me like a fever. My mind reels back to when I was a little girl and I try to pinpoint where it all went wrong. I suppose it started with the fights about dresses, which I refused to wear after age six. And then it was about skipping Sunday school. Following that were endless arguments about making my bed and not wanting to take those stupid ballet lessons. Then it was everything. She said black and I said white. She said to go left and I went right. Eventually I couldn't tell the difference between what I was doing to make myself happy and what I was doing just to annoy her.

  The only argument Louise and Mom ever have is about baby-sitting. Louise hates baby-sitting Francie and the twins, even if Mom pays her. And Eric hasn't fought with Mom or Dad since he was in middle school. Though once Eric came home drunk and Dad made him get up at six o'clock the next morning and work all day—mowing the lawn, cleaning the garage, washing the cars. He looked as if he was going to die.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the phone ringing. Someone in the living room picks it up and the sound of a short muffled conversation drifts up the stairwell.