“Sounds pretty real to me. Anyway, the whole point of the novel is how someone uses romance as a way of escaping from the boredom of her life.”
“So what else is new?” she said.
My dad, on the other hand, seemed interested in my take on the book. We were having one of our very occasional lunches off-campus (as much as I adored him, I didn’t want to be seen eating with my father at the Union), slurping clam chowder at a little diner near the university. I told him how much I loved the book, and how I thought Emma Bovary was “a real victim of society.”
“In what way?” he asked.
“Well, the way she lets herself get trapped in a life she doesn’t want, and how she thinks falling in love with someone else will solve her problems.”
He smiled at me and said, “That’s very good. Spot on.”
“What I don’t get is why she had to choose suicide as a way out; why she just didn’t run away to Paris or something.”
“But you’re seeing Emma from the perspective of an American woman in the late 1960s, not as someone trapped by the conventions of her time. You’ve read The Scarlet Letter, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, nowadays we might wonder why Hester Prynne put up with walking around Boston with a big letter A on her chest, and lived with constant threats from the Puritan elders about taking her child away. We could ask: why didn’t she just grab her daughter and flee elsewhere? But in her mind, the question would have been: where can I go? To her, there was no escape from her punishment—which she almost considered to be her destiny. It’s the same thing with Emma. She knows if she flees to Paris, she’ll end up, at best, working as a seamstress or in some other depressing petit bourgeois job—because nineteenth-century society was very unforgiving about a married woman who’d run away from her responsibilities.”
“Does this lecture last long?” I asked, laughing. “Because I’ve got a class at two.”
“I’m just getting to the point,” Dad said with a smile. “And the point is: personal happiness didn’t count for anything. Flaubert was the first great novelist to understand that we all have to grapple with the prison we create for ourselves.”
“Even you, Dad?” I asked, surprised to hear him make this admission. He smiled another of his rueful smiles and stared down into his bowl of chowder.
“Everyone gets bored from time to time,” he said. Then he changed the subject.
It wasn’t the first time my father had implied that things weren’t exactly perfect with my mom. I knew they fought. My mom was Brooklyn Loud, and tended to fly off the handle when something pissed her off. My dad, true to his Boston roots, hated public confrontation (unless it involved adoring crowds and the threat of arrest). So as soon as Mom was in one of her flipped-out moods, he tended to run for cover.
When I was younger, these fights disturbed me. But, as I got older, I began to understand that my parents fundamentally got along, that theirs was a weirdly volatile relationship that just somehow worked, perhaps because they were such fantastic polar opposites. And though I probably would have liked them around more as I was growing up, one thing I did learn from their sometimes stormy, independent-minded marriage was that two people didn’t have to crowd each other to make a relationship work. But when Dad hinted at a certain level of domestic boredom, I realized something else: you never know what’s going on with two people . . . you can only speculate.
Just as you can only speculate about why a woman like Emma Bovary so believed that love would be the answer to all her problems.
“Because the vast majority of women are idiots, that’s why,” my mother said when I made the mistake of asking her opinion about Flaubert’s novel. “And do you know why they’re idiots? Because they put their entire faith in a man. Wrong move. Got that? Always.”
“I’m not stupid, Mom,” I said.
“We’ll see about that.”
TWO
I’LL NEVER GET married,” I announced to my mother just before starting my freshman year at college. This proclamation came right after one of her particularly virulent rants against my dad, which only ended when he locked himself into his study at the top of the house and blared Mozart on his hi-fi to muffle her. After she quieted down—courtesy of a cigarette and a glass of J&B—she found me sitting glumly at the kitchen table.
“Welcome to marriage,” she said.
“I’ll never get married,” I said.
“Yes, you will—and you’ll fight with the guy. Because that’s what happens. That’s the deal.”
“It won’t be my deal.”
“One hundred bucks says you’ll go down the aisle before you’re twenty-five,” my mom said.
“You’re on,” I said. “Because there’s no way that’s going to happen.”
“Famous last words,” Mom said.
“How can you be so sure I’m going to get married young?”
“Maternal intuition.”
“Well, you’re definitely going to lose that bet.”
Six months later, I met Dan. One night a few weeks later, when we were already an item, Margy turned to me and said, “Just do me a favor: don’t marry him now.”
“Come on, Margy. I’m still getting to know the guy.”
“Yeah, but your mind is made up.”
“How can you say that? I’m not that transparent.”
“Wanna bet?”
Damn Margy, she knew me too well. I’d liked Dan from the start, but I’d never said I was planning to marry him. So how was it that Margy and my mom had it figured?
“You’re a traditionalist,” my mom told me.
“That’s so not true,” I said.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “Some people have a rebellious streak, some are timid, some are just . . . conventional.”
“I really don’t know why I bother talking to you,” I said.
Mom shrugged. “Then don’t talk to me. I mean, you’re the one who came by here today for lunch, and also to ask my advice about Doctor Dan . . .”
“You really can’t stand him, can you?”
“Can’t stand Dan? What an absurd idea. Doctor Dan is every mother’s dream.”
“He thought you were nice.”
“I’m certain Dan thinks most people are nice.”
In Mom’s universe, nobody interesting was normal or decent. Those virtues were for the terminally boring. And from the moment she met him, I knew that she’d filed Dan away under Dull.
The thing was: I never found him dull. He was just . . . normal. Unlike Mom and Dad, he didn’t overwhelm you with himself, nor did he try to dazzle with his intellect or his accomplishments. He laughed at my jokes, he valued my views, he encouraged me in whatever I was doing. And he liked me for simply being me. No wonder my mom didn’t really take to him.
“She wants what she thinks is best for you,” Dan said after meeting her.
“The ultimate Jewish Mother curse.”
“You should see it for what it is: good intentions gone a little astray.”
“Do you always try to find the decent side of people?”
Another of his diffident shrugs.
“Is that a terrible thing?” he asked.
“I think it’s one of the reasons I love you.”
Now how did that slip out? I’d only known the guy for ten weeks, but, in private, I’d already decided.
Unlike some of my college friends, who seemed to sleep with a new guy every weekend, I wasn’t really into “free love” any more than I wanted an “open relationship” with Dan. From the outset, we had an unspoken agreement that we’d remain monogamous—because we both wanted it that way.
During the Easter weekend, we drove five hours to visit his father in Glens Falls. Though we’d now been together for several months, it was the first time I’d met his dad (his mom having died, at the age of forty, of an aneurysm during Dan’s junior year in high school). The weekend went just fine. Joe Buchan was a first-generation American. H
is parents had come over from Poland in the early 1920s, and immediately ditched the name Buchevski for the all-American “Buchan.” His dad had been an electrician, so Joe became an electrician. His dad had been a serious patriot, so Joe became a serious patriot, volunteering for the Marines after Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“Ended up in Okinawa with four of my friends from Glens Falls. You know about Okinawa, Hannah?”
I shook my head.
“Less you know about it, the better,” he said.
“Dad was the only one of his friends who came back alive,” Dan said.
“Yeah, well, I just was the lucky one,” Joe said. “During a war, you can do your damnedest to avoid getting shot or blown up. But if a bullet has your name on it . . .”
He paused. He took a pull of his bottle of beer. “Was your dad in the war, Hannah?”
“Yes. He was based in Washington and for a short time in London—something in Intelligence.”
“So he never saw action?” Joe asked.
“Dad . . .” Dan said.
“Hey, it’s just a question,” Joe said. “I’m just asking if Hannah’s dad ever came under fire, that’s all. I know he’s some big peacenik . . .”
“Dad . . .” Dan said.
“Hey, I’m not saying anything against the guy,” Joe said. “I mean, I don’t know him—and as much as I hate his peacenik attitudes, I gotta tell you, Hannah, that I respect his guts in standing up for—”
“Dad, will you please get off the soapbox now?”
“Hey, I ain’t trying to insult nobody.”
“I’m not insulted,” I said.
Joe squeezed my arm. It was like having a tourniquet applied to it.
“Thatta girl,” he said, then turned to his son and added, “Y’see, we’re just havin’ an exchange of views here.”
I felt right at home with their banter . . . even if the home in question was so damn different from my own. Joe Buchan didn’t own many books, and had a wood-paneled rec room in the basement, where he spent a lot of time on his very own Barcalounger in front of the big Zenith color television while watching his beloved Buffalo Bills get the crap kicked out of them every weekend.
“I hope he doesn’t think I’m some eastern snot,” I asked Dan on the drive back to Vermont.
“He told me he’s in love with you.”
“Liar,” I said, smiling.
“No, it’s the truth. You totally won him over. And I hope you didn’t mind all that stuff about your dad . . .”
“It really didn’t bother me. In fact, I thought it was kind of cute—him going to all that trouble to find out about Dad . . .”
“Hey, he’s an electrician. And if there’s one thing I know about electricians, it’s that they’re obsessed with knowing everything there is to know about whatever they need to know about. Which is why he read up on your dad.”
“He’s so normal and down-to-earth,” I said.
“No parent is completely normal.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But your folks are pretty stable.”
“In their own wayward way.”
“We’ll never be wayward,” he said with a laugh.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
We’ll never be wayward. I knew that this was Dan’s way of telling me that he wanted us to last. Which is exactly how I felt—in spite of the whispering voice that said, Hold on. You’re still only a sophomore . . . everything’s in front of you . . . Don’t box yourself in so soon.
It took another six months for Dan to come out and say, “I love you.” It was summer, and Dan had won a place in a program for medical students at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. When he found out that he’d been the one University of Vermont medical student chosen for this program, he said, “Feel like spending the summer with me in Boston?” It took me about two seconds to say yes. Within a week, I’d found us a cheap sublet at $85 a month in Cambridge. I also found out about a remedial reading program in Roxbury run by Quakers, but completely nondenominational, and in need of volunteer teachers. So I applied and was accepted—no salary, just $25 a week for carfare and lunch, and the chance to do a little good.
My dad was delighted when I told him how I’d be spending my vacation. My mom also expressed her approval—though, being Mom, it was tinged with reservations.
“Promise me you’ll get out of Roxbury before dark. And promise me you’ll try to get some nice local guy to walk you to the subway every night and put you on the train.”
“By local guy, do you mean ‘black’?” I asked.
“I am not being racist,” she said. “But though your dad and I might think it’s admirable that you’re choosing to spend your summer this way, down in Roxbury you’re going to be perceived as a white liberal interloper . . .”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“I’m just telling the truth.”
As it turned out, Roxbury wasn’t as sinister as expected. Yes, it was a slum—and the signs of social deprivation were everywhere. But the Dudley Street Project was run by a mix of educational professionals and local community workers—and didn’t wear its liberal credentials on its sleeve. They put me in charge of a half-dozen ten-year-olds—all of whom had limited reading skills, to the point where The Cat in the Hat was a big challenge to them all. I won’t say I transformed them in the seven weeks I was there, but by the end of the summer, four of my gang were able to tackle The Hardy Boys—and I knew that I had found something I loved. Everyone talks about the “rewards” of teaching, of “giving something back” or “making a difference.” The truth is, there’s also a kick about being in charge, being the boss. And when one of my gang had a breakthrough, I felt a real buzz . . . even if the kid himself didn’t recognize what he’d just achieved.
“You mean,” Margy said on a long-distance call from New York, “it isn’t all Sidney Poitier where the kids are thugs at the start, but, by the end, come up to you with tears in their eyes and say, ‘Miz Hannah, you’ve changed my life’?”
“No, hon,” I said. “All the kids hate being in this summer school—and they look upon me as their warden. But at least they’re learning.”
“It sounds more useful than what I’m doing.”
Courtesy of her mother’s connections, Margy had landed a summer internship at Seventeen.
“But I thought magazines were supposed to be glamorous.”
“Not this one. And all the uppity interns from the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters look down on me because I go to Vermont.”
“Bet you can drink more beer than they can.”
“Bet I also don’t end up married to someone named Todd, like all of them will. Speaking of which, how’s la vie domestique?”
“Well, I hate to say it, but . . .”
“Yeah?”
“We’re doing wonderfully.”
“God, you’re boring.”
“Guilty as charged.”
But it was the truth. Mom was right: I did like playing house. And Dan was just great when it came to dealing with the dull domestic stuff. Better yet, we didn’t crowd each other, even though the best thing about the summer was the discovery that Dan was such good company. We always had something to talk about, and he took such an interest in the world around us. I was hopeless when it came to keeping track of everything that was going down in Vietnam, whereas Dan knew about every Army offensive, every Vietcong strike-back. And he got me to read Philip Roth—in order, as he said, to begin to understand “Jewish Mother fixations.”
My mom had read Portnoy’s Complaint when it was first published in 1969. When I mentioned to her that I’d finally gotten around to it this summer, her reaction took me by surprise.
“Don’t you dare think that I’m like Mrs. Portnoy.”
“Oh, please.”
“I can just imagine what you tell Doctor Dan about me.”
“Now who’s being paranoid?”
“I am not being paranoid . . .”
Her tone was s
uddenly strange—almost as if she were a little unhinged about something.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked.
“How weird do I sound?”
“Weird enough to get me worried. Has something happened?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said. Then she quickly changed the subject, reminding me that my dad was coming down to Cambridge on Friday night to address a rally in Boston against the invasion of Cambodia.
“He’ll call you when he gets to town,” she said, and hung up.
On Friday morning, at the Dudley Street Project, I received a message from my dad, telling me to meet him after the rally at the Copley Plaza Hotel, where a news conference was going to be held. The rally was at five that afternoon, on the steps of the Boston Public Library.
I was late and Copley Square was so packed that I found myself standing halfway down Boylston Street, listening to my father’s voice amplified along the city streets. There he was, a speck on a platform several hundred yards from where I stood. Yet the voice I was hearing wasn’t a magnified version of the one that used to read me bedtime stories, or calmed me down after one of Mom’s tirades. It was the voice of a Great Public Man: bold, stentorian, confident. But rather than feel a certain daughterly pride in his brilliant oratory and his popular acclaim, a certain sadness took hold of me, a sense that I didn’t have him to myself anymore . . . if, that is, I ever did.
Trying to negotiate my way to the Copley Plaza Hotel afterward was a nightmare. Though it was less than a quarter of a mile from where I was standing, the crowd was so dense and so slow to disperse that it took me nearly an hour to reach its front door. When I got there, the cops had thrown a security cordon around the place, and weren’t letting anyone in unless they had press ID. Fortunately, at that moment, a reporter from The Burlington Eagle, James Saunders, came up to the barricade, flashing his press badge to the cop. I’d met him when he’d interviewed Dad at home, and suddenly called out his name. To my relief, he remembered me immediately, vouched for me to the cop on duty, and whisked me inside.
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