Rhoda

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Okay,” I said. “You need to have a meeting. You and your mother and Edward sit down and talk this over. Your mother says he was horsing around. Maybe you took it wrong.”

  “He did it to be mean.”

  “Okay. I’m going to send you some books about what to do when your mother has a boyfriend. Hell, maybe I’ll send you Sophocles.” My daughter-in-law laughed. For a moment the tension wavered. Like a thermocline, the water of laughter invaded the heat. Then the heat returned.

  “If he’s going to be around, I’ll come and live with you,” he said. “If you like me so much let me live with you.”

  Above us the beautiful light green leaves swayed in the breeze. Above them stretched the sky with its immensity and wonder. I looked into my ex-daughter-in-law’s wide brown eyes. We had fought this child’s father together. I had fought his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. We knew what we were up against. This will that grew stronger from generation to generation. That finally, in this child, had been mixed with her German, Dutch, and American Indian genes. Hybrid vigor. My Celtic craziness dissolved in more rational, cooler genes. Will and imagination and a sense of order remained of my genetic contribution. And the strongest of these was will.

  There he sat, in the passenger seat of his great-grandmother’s car, the end product of all this random genius, ready to defend his territory at any cost.

  “I’m going to send you a book about a man named Oedipus,” I said. “It will explain the psychological ramifications of this problem. Call me up when you’ve read it and we’ll talk about it.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means.” He raised his head and looked at me. Gave me the full force of his gaze. He’s an intuitive too. Nothing gets past him. There is no barrier between him and the world. Not a membrane to separate him from all that burgeoning wonder, all the glorious and inglorious knowledge of our being.

  “I will love you till I die,” I said. “I love you more than anyone. You are the dearest thing on earth to me.”

  “Let’s go back to the party.”

  “We better,” his mother added. “I have to see about the little girls.”

  The day wore on into evening. The little girls went off to spend the night with cousins. My ex-daughter-in-law and her boyfriend went off to party with my nieces.

  I took my grandson to the mall. We bought some baseball shirts and a pair of striped shorts. We ate some junk food. We held hands and walked around and looked at things. He is five foot five inches tall now. As tall as I am. Soon it will be over, this part of it. The part when he was a child and I was his guardian angel. He will leave me and go off to the world. He will leave me here with memories of many days in many malls, of buying transformers and Lego sets and books and basketball shoes and posters of Jose Canseco. Baseball hats and tacos and pizza and frozen yogurt. Goofy golf and batting cages and long walks and bike rides and swimming pools. We have heard the chimes at bedtime, oh, the malls that we have seen.

  “I love you,” I kept telling him. “It’s okay if your mother has a boyfriend. It will make her stronger. Anything that makes her stronger, makes you stronger. We are a family. We stick together.”

  “I wish you lived where I do. I wish you lived next door.”

  “I wish I did too. I hate to miss a day of seeing you.”

  After a while the mall began to close and we walked out into the parking lot and watched the black teenagers forming into groups. I held his hand and let him find the car for me.

  We went over to my momma’s house and slept in my old bed. We snuggled down into the sheets from London. I pulled his fine strong eleven-and-a-half-year-old body into my arms and held him there. “You are my angel,” I said. “No one will ever take your place with me. Your mother and I love you more than you will ever know. No one will ever take her or me away from you.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. I found his hand and held it. It is still the same size as mine. Delicate, with long thin fingers like his mother’s. He is the catcher on his baseball team, the goalie at soccer. Always the dirtiest, hardest job in any sport. Because he can be depended upon.

  “Go to sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow’s Easter. Grandmother dyed eggs for us to hide.”

  In the morning everyone reconvened in my mother’s yard to hide Easter eggs and take photographs of each other. It was about evenly divided, between children who had been to Sunday School and the children of apostates.

  The boyfriend moved among the children being charming. “My father is taller than you are,” I heard the six-year-old girl tell him.

  “No, he’s not,” I said. “Edward is taller than your father.” He raised his eyebrows just an almost imperceptible amount and sighed, and seemed to thank me.

  “Why did you introduce him to the children?” I asked my ex-daughter-in-law. “Why did you even let him meet them?”

  “He asked to. I put it off as long as I could. Well, it’s done now. Let’s get this Easter egg hunt over and I’ll take him home.”

  “This was a stupid idea. I shouldn’t have talked you into coming. It was nuts. Coming up here into your ex-husband’s family. Mother acting like the high priestess of a cult. The shrine of the double standard. My family in Jackson, Mississippi.”

  “It’s okay. I know what I want. I won’t let this stop me.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it.” I hugged her to my side. This woman six inches taller than me who is the only daughter I have ever had, who has never let me down or disappointed me. This giver of grandchildren, whom I worship.

  An hour later they drove away. The boyfriend driving. My ex-daughter-in-law riding shotgun with the six-year-old beside her. The older children on the back seat with their Walkmans plugged into their ears. “Thank goodness that is over,” my mother said.

  “What a mean thing to say,” I said. “I’m pulling for her. I want her to be happy.”

  “He’s too young,” my mother said. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Five days later I was in the kitchen of my house, leaning on a counter, hearing the fallout on the phone. “The boyfriend’s gone,” my ex-daughter-in-law is saying. “They scared him off.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”

  “It had to happen. I’m a group of people. I’m four of us.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No.”

  “Is there something I can do?”

  “I don’t think so. I guess I have to ride it out.”

  “Fuck love. Fuck having lovers.”

  “Come on, Rhoda. It’s not that bad. I had a good time for a while.”

  “Next time keep him to yourself. Don’t even tell him you have kids. Don’t tell me.”

  “I’ve had enough to last me for a while.”

  We hung up and I went out into my garden and started to water the hostas and the lilies. I pulled the garden hose around the hickory tree and started to turn it on. Then I changed my mind. To hell with nature. Let it take care of itself. I spotted a wasps’ nest under the eaves by the garage. I went into the house and got a can of flying insect spray and sprayed it good. I doused it and then I sprayed some on a spider’s web.

  If I had been one of my grandfathers I would have gone out to the stables and saddled a horse and put a bit in its mouth and gone riding with my dogs at my heels. Instead, I went into the house and put on my running shoes and started out around the mountain. I don’t have any German-Jewish or American Indian or Dutch genes. I’m a Celt. I pile up stones and keep a loaded pistol in my underwear drawer. My ancestors painted themselves blue and impaled each other on oak staves. I can’t stand tyranny. From the world outside or the tyranny of the heart. How can I help anyone? I can’t even help myself. I was GLAD HE HAD WON. GLAD NO ONE COULD TAKE HIS MOTHER FROM HIM. GLAD HE KNEW HOW TO KEEP HER.

  Even as I suffered for her I was glad no man would be in the house with those little girls, not any man, not the sweetest man in the world, in this chaot
ic world, vale of sorrows, vale of tears.

  The Uninsured

  August 1, 1993

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  I got your letter advising me that you are redoing our health insurance plans. I guess this means you are going to be raising our rates again. I know you want to raise my rates since for the past ten years it has cost you more to pay my psychiatrist than you have collected from me. We may be getting tired of each other. It may be time to sever our relationship especially since I am about to cut down on the number of times I see him each week and aside from that am in perfect health.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Rhoda K. Manning

  September 3, 1993

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  While I wait to see if you have figured out a way to make money from me instead of me making money from you I have done the following at your expense. Had a mammogram and Pap smear. Had a bone density evaluation and scan. Had an AIDS test. Had a blood profile and blood pressure check. Had ten small skin lesions removed from my hands and arm and lower legs. Had all my prescription drugs filled.

  I have also driven up to Jackson, Mississippi, to visit my eighty-six-year-old parents and found them both in perfect health. From all these tests and the evidence of my genes it is clear that, barring accidents, I will live to be about ninety years old with no bone, heart, liver, lung, or brain disease. My blood pressure is ninety over sixty. My bone density is that of a thirty-year-old woman. It is obvious that if you raise my rates I will have to consider bailing out of your Flex-Plan.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Rhoda K. Manning

  October 10, 1993

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  I have applied to the John Alden Insurance Company of Springfield, Illinois, for inclusion in their Jali-Care Program. I am going to let the two of you bid for my healthy body. A healthy body, I might add, that has been shored up by twenty years of psychotherapy which has taught me to love, care for, and value myself.

  The John Alden representative in our area has come to visit me. He is a very nice man about my age who once was a forest ranger in Oregon. We chatted and drank bottled water and he took my medical history. He said that, with the exception of my twenty years of psychotherapy, he was certain my record would be well received at the John Alden Jali-Care Evaluation Center. “I am not mentally disturbed,” I told him. “I am a writer. The reason I have never been blocked is because I have been in psychotherapy and therefore am able to withstand the pressures of society upon my artistic nature. It is also the reason I have never been depressed or had accidents.”

  You people at Blue Cross may think the four hundred dollars a month it has cost you to pay my psychiatrist is a lot of money but think of what it might have cost you if I had harmed myself with food or drink or drugs or unhappy love affairs. You are coming out ahead, I assure you.

  Well, this is just to keep you updated while I wait for my letter telling me about the restructuring of Farm Policy Group Seven’s Comprehensive Major Medical Coverage for the Future.

  Yours most truly,

  Rhoda K. Manning

  November 7, 1993

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  I just got my flu shot. I didn’t charge it to you since I just ran by the Mediquik and it only cost five dollars so I thought it wasn’t worth the paperwork. I have been racking my brain trying to think of something else I can have done to myself before I bail out of the health insurance business and devote myself to staying in perfect health until I am sixty-five and can get some of my tax dollars back in Medicare.

  The John Alden Insurance Company sent a sweet young woman out to do a medical check on me. She called one afternoon at four and asked if she could come the next day at noon. I guess that was to make sure I wasn’t forewarned in case I secretly smoke or drink. I told her to come on and she said I had to fast from eight that night until noon. That was the hard part. I never go eight hours without food as I believe in controlling the blood sugar levels at all times.

  She arrived promptly at noon. It turns out she lives in my part of town. She said when she was ready to buy a house she asked a policeman where the safest place in town was and he said these old neighborhoods on the mountain. The houses were built in the sixties and look like there would be nothing here to steal.

  She came in and weighed me on a pair of scales she carries with her in a carpet bag. Then she drew blood and separated it in various little cylinders and sealed them up and put them in a pack to be taken by Federal Express to a lab in Kansas City. I had to sign a paper saying they could do an AIDS test. That’s two in two months’ time. I was glad to do it. As I told Sharon Cane, that’s her name, if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem. A gay friend of mine tells that to anyone who won’t be tested for HIV.

  Next I gave Sharon a urine specimen. She explained to me that they could tell from it if I had smoked a cigarette in the last ten days or had a drink. I have not had a drink in twenty years. A hypnotist in New Orleans talked me out of that years ago.

  The way I feel now is that if the John Alden Jali-Care people don’t have enough sense to want my $157.69 a month after all of this they can go to hell.

  You may think from the tone of this letter that I am getting mad at you, but you would be wrong. I have appreciated all those checks for fifty percent of my psychotherapy. I don’t blame you for trying to figure out a way to get your money back but I don’t think there’s any reason for me to give it to you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Rhoda K. Manning

  December 4, 1993

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  John Alden Jali-Care is considering my application. I passed all my physical tests with flying colors but they are worried about the years of psychotherapy and have requested a letter from my psychotherapist, which he is drafting now.

  I assume that the reason I haven’t heard from you about my policy is that you have been busy with the lawsuit the Arkansas Senate is bringing against you for raising all the rates of people with preexisting conditions to such exorbitant amounts that they (we) are all going to have to quit. In the meantime I am pursuing other options as I have told you in our correspondence.

  It said in the paper today that you had begun all this in order to get ready for the great Health Care Debate of 1994. Well, all I can say is I am losing interest in the whole thing. I have always paid for the things that made a real difference to my health, like eyeglasses, running shoes, good books, good music, movies, food. I know how to go to Mediquik and get shots. Not to mention the dentist, which you do not cover either.

  Good luck with your lawsuit.

  Yours sincerely,

  Rhoda Manning

  December 5, 1993

  Dear John Alden Jali-Care,

  Here is the letter from my psychiatrist which you requested. From it you will see that the only reason I have been going to him all these years is because I am a writer. It has nothing whatsoever to do with health problems. It is preventive medicine, and besides, I’m cutting down on my sessions and you won’t be responsible for them anyway as they are a preexisting condition. Hope everything is clear now.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Rhoda K. Manning

  December 15, 1993

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  I received your offer to continue to provide me with health insurance for $567.69 a month with a three-thousand-dollar deductible and a fifty-thousand-dollar stop-loss. I have decided to decline this offer. It’s been nice doing business with you but I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

  Stay well,

  Rhoda Manning

  January 1, 1994

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  This is my first day of being uninsured. It feels great. I have had the snow shoveled from my sidewalk, am wearing my seat belt at all times, and have invested two thousand, three hundred dollars in a new Exercycle from the StairMaster people.

&nbs
p; If I subtract the one thousand, six hundred and seventy dollars quarterly payment I would have sent you that is only about seven hundred dollars for the Exercycle.

  Looking ahead to the second quarterly payment I have bought a new fur jacket to keep me from catching cold. With the two hundred dollars I saved by having all my prescriptions filled in 1993 I bought a matching hat and muff.

  Yours for a happy and healthy new year,

  Rhoda Manning

  February 1, 1994

  Dear Blue Cross, Blue Shield,

  Now that a month has passed and all is well I have decided to look ahead to the money I would be paying you the next few years and put in a lap pool. The pool people don’t have much to do this time of year and have given me a twenty percent discount.

  February 27, 1994 – Sorry I didn’t get this off sooner but they came and started digging the hole for the pool and it’s been chaos around here. All is well now. The pool is nine feet wide and sixty-nine feet long. It has an electric cover that can be opened or closed from a switch in the kitchen. Talk about high technology.

  Do you remember Sharon Cane, who came to draw blood for the John Alden Jali-Care Evaluation? Well, she is swimming with me three days a week. She starts at one end and I start at the other to make waves for each other to swim against. We usually bet five dollars on who can swim the most laps in an hour. A lot of times we lose count because we are having so much fun. I am down to seeing my analyst three times a month now that I have to pay for it. No ill effects so far, only I can tell I am not working as hard as I was when I had him to drive me to it. Why should I work seven days a week? It’s almost spring. The long winter is over and I didn’t catch the flu. That five-dollar flu shot may be the best money I spent all year.