The Grammarians

by Cathleen Schine

  “Oh, Don,” Aunt Paula said.

  “It’s a transitional time,” he said. “A rift would be quite natural.”

  “No, god, Uncle Don. Not a rift. A deadline.”

  “A deadline,” he said, obviously unconvinced.

  “Well, I think Daphne is being very rude,” Sally said.

  “You’ve never had deadlines,” Aunt Paula said. “Believe me, they wait for no man. And especially for no woman.”

  “Yes, Mom has deadlines all the time,” Brian said. “At court, at the office. Deadlines make her late for everything at home.” He seemed quite pleased announcing his mother’s delinquency. “She misses a million family things.”

  “I do, it’s true,” Paula said complacently.

  “Hey, Dad,” Brian said, turning with a grin to his father. “Is there a rift? Is there a rift between you and Mom?”

  Laurel laughed. Brian, about to start college, was as annoying as ever, but now he was annoying the right people. She noticed a plastic container of pickles that had not yet been opened. She popped the top off and saw that the pickles were bright half dills. “Oh thank you, thank you. Half dill. You know how we pregnant ladies like pickles.”

  “All anyone in this family really cares about is food,” Brian said. “In Ethiopia people are eating grass at this very moment. Have you even read the EPA report on the greenhouse effect?”

  “He’s nervous about going off to Cornell,” Don whispered to Laurel.

  “Sweetheart, eat your bagel, then put your headphones back on and listen to your music and leave the poor, ignorant grown-ups alone,” Paula said.

  “If there’s a rift,” Uncle Don was saying to Daphne, “you know you can always talk to me.”

  “What if there’s not a rift? Can I talk to you then?”

  “Oh god,” Arthur said wearily. “Don’t start.”

  “Tell your daughter that she can talk to me anytime she feels it necessary, providing she keep a civil tongue in her head.”

  “Laurel, leave your poor uncle alone,” Sally said. “What is wrong with you two?”

  As Brian sloped back to his Walkman and the living room couch, Laurel noticed a happy smirk on his face, and she felt, somehow, that even without Daphne the brunch had been a success.

  ONE. adj. [an, œne, Saxon; een, Dutch; ein, German; ``εu, Greek.] 1. Less than two; single; denoted by an unite.

  —A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson

  The word “baby” comes from babulus, which means prattle in Latin. Laurel told Charlotte that.

  “I can prattle to you, and you will understand,” she said in a soft, prattling voice.

  The second meaning of “baby” in the dictionary was a doll or puppet. Laurel did not mention that to Charlotte.

  She took her to Riverside Park every day. They walked through a rotunda and an underpass beneath the West Side Highway and made their way to the river. (“Well, only you walk,” Daphne said when told of their outings. “The baby rolls in her carriage.”)

  As autumn took over, the walk got colder. Small gray waves splashed against old pylons. It was a lonely place, or it would have been lonely without Charlotte. With Charlotte, it was full.

  Imagine, she said to the baby, not bothering, not needing to speak out loud: just one of you.

  But she could not, in fact, imagine. For her, there had always been Daphne. And now Daphne’s place, a place that was neither inside nor outside of Laurel, was occupied by this child.

  “You understand me,” Laurel said to the baby.

  The wind picked up and Laurel tucked the blanket closer around the now-sleeping child, careful not to disturb her.

  They really should have named the baby Privity, she thought, for there had never been anyone closer to her. There had never been anyone she loved as much. Of course, they could not really name her Privity. Even in the singular it sounded like a legal principle. Or a hedge. Or a toilet.

  “Privity,” Laurel said to Charlotte. She was fast asleep in the lacy white blanket that someone had crocheted, she wished she could remember who, probably one of Larry’s aunts or former girlfriends or his parents’ housekeeper, there were so many people now in their family circle, though no one mattered except this little baby. No part of the baby was visible except her face, which looked a little chapped, the pink of her cheeks like an old man’s reddened skin. Laurel turned the carriage around and headed toward home. Her hands were cold, and she reached into the pocket of her coat for her gloves, but she had forgotten them.

  They had named the baby a proper name, a beautiful name that Laurel had always wished were her own name: Charlotte. Every young couple they met seemed to have named their daughter Charlotte, too, but Charlotte didn’t seem to mind.

  Both sets of grandparents were forever hanging around the baby, like hyenas around a dead thing.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say,” Larry said. “Jesus, I’m going to have nightmares.”

  “Jackals.”

  “They’re grandparents, honey. They just want to see her and hold her.”

  “And suck up her life force.”

  She didn’t mean her parents, though she would never tell Larry that. It was his parents.

  “They hover and snarl, drooling with savage grandparent hunger. Your mother comes every single day. Nearly.”

  “She helps, though, doesn’t she? I hope she does.”

  Laurel said, Yes, of course she does, they were incredibly lucky.

  Larry’s mother was generous and extreme, a physically slight person, slender and graceful, but a large presence. She arrived at the door burdened with noisy, crackling paper grocery bags overflowing with food. In this way, she was the kind of woman Laurel tried to avoid on the West Side, the ones tailgating other shopping carts in Fairway, elbowing past you at the counter at Zabar’s. Larry’s mother was a menace in the aisles of a specialty grocery store, steely-eyed and single-minded. But once inside her son’s apartment with the spoils of war, she became as calm a person as, with her composed expression and confident smile, she initially seemed to be.

  “She’s not even Jewish,” Laurel said to Larry. “How did this happen to her? This deli-gathering hunter-warrior persona? She doesn’t act like this in Bar Harbor.”

  He laughed. “No. She’s environmentally sensitive.”

  Laurel made tea for her mother-in-law and served whatever tidbits had been captured on that day’s foray. Then they put Charlotte on the table in her basket and watched her as if she were a television show.

  “Her feet!”

  “She’s laughing!”

  Sometimes Laurel snuck a glance at her mother-in-law. How happy she was, placing her manicured hands over her eyes, removing them with a cry of “Peek-a-boo,” an ancient game that Charlotte thought was new, new again, and again, new!

  I helped make someone this happy, Laurel thought. Someone who is now my family. Someone I hardly know. She meant her mother-in-law, but she realized she meant Charlotte, too.

  * * *

  Arthur sometimes said Laurel and her family should have moved closer to them, to Westchester.

  “You come almost every day as it is, so what are we talking about here? Every hour?”

  “How can they move to a soulless suburb and leave behind the single-room-occupancy hotel down the street?” Sally said to the baby. “That would never do for your mommy, would it? But we wouldn’t mind, would we? Because we would have you in our soulless suburb.”

  “You see her a million times a week, Mom.”

  Sally examined the baby’s fingernails, tapping them with her finger, which looked enormous beside Charlotte’s, the finger of a giantess. “Her fingernails are little bits of shell.”

  Laurel said, “They get so sharp. Tiny little pearl claws is more like it. I just trimmed them.”

  “Your mommy likes to shock her mommy, Charlotte. That’s why she said you have claws.”

  Laurel laughed.

  Sally pressed the baby’s toes
to her lips and said, “What about your sister?”

  “I don’t cut her fingernails.”

  “Does she come up to see you? Which you know is what I meant.”

  “Of course she does,” said Arthur.

  “Of course she does,” Laurel said.

  Daphne did not come uptown often, though. Becky had been promoted to managing editor, and Daphne had taken her place as copy chief. The Vogue piece had been a success, and she was writing more than ever for DownTown, too. She had visited Laurel a couple of weeks ago, but that was what it felt like to Laurel, a visit, and Laurel had sensed herself becoming self-conscious, awkward with her sister.

  As Daphne kissed and fondled Charlotte, Laurel had been unable to stop herself from weakly asking for reassurance. “You like her, don’t you?”

  Daphne had removed her face from Charlotte’s belly. “You nut. I adore her. I want her. How is it I got the stray cat and you got the gorgeous baby?”

  That had been a relief, to hear her say that.

  “And she has red hair, so we know you’re the mother,” Daphne had continued. “Although, who’s to say it wasn’t me in that hospital bed swearing and sweating?” She lifted Charlotte and held her out, examining her. Then, with a satisfied smile, she said, “Yup. She has my nose.”

  * * *

  Now Laurel smoothed the wisps of baby red hair on Charlotte’s brow, stroked the baby’s nose, which was indeed a tiny replica of the twin nose she had once had, and said to her parents, “Daphne doesn’t come up here every fifteen minutes like you two, and I do miss her. But it’s different these days.”

  Sally picked up the baby and held her close. “Things are different,” she said in a singsong. She rested her cheek on Charlotte’s head. “Things are different.” Things were different now with this grandchild in her arms. There had been so little time to spare when her daughters were this young. So little time to rest a reverent cheek on a small, tender head.

  TO WORK. v.n. pret. worked, or wrought. [peoρcan, Saxon; werken, Dutch.] 5. To ferment.

  —A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson

  Charlotte is born in October. The assumption is, among some, that having successfully produced her offspring, Laurel will now long to return to the classroom in January. But she does not.

  “You’re burying yourself,” Daphne says. “You know the school would love to have you back, Laurel.”

  “Indeed we would,” says Headmaster Gravit.

  It is a dinner party. An ambush party, Laurel thinks.

  “You had a semester off. How much time do you need to devote to changing disposable diapers?”

  Oh, Gravit, Laurel thinks as the headmaster’s unbuttoned cuff skims the gravy on his plate.

  “Darling.” Gravit’s wife, Pamela, dabbed at him with her napkin. “And if she’s not ready to come back, she’s not ready to come back.”

  Everyone is speaking at once, gesticulating, shaking their heads, all of it aimed at Laurel.

  “You don’t understand,” she says. “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re withering on the vine.”

  “I think Daphne means you have so much to offer.” Michael, not at all convinced that is what Daphne meant.

  “No, I meant she’s withering on the vine.”

  Laurel is becoming angry. Larry senses it and says how nice it is to have a traditional Christmas dinner when it’s not even Christmas yet. Turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie. He is about to say, And with no relatives, but remembers Daphne is the very closest and the most troublesome of all the relatives. “Shall I check on Charlotte?” he asks. No one hears.

  “I’m being a mother.” Laurel is speaking as loudly as a person can speak without yelling. “What’s wrong with that? ‘To mother’—it’s a verb, something you do.”

  “You have nothing to talk about anymore.” Her sister again, even louder. “You need to go back to work!”

  “You do know you’re an extraordinary teacher?” Gravit, blandly, as if this were not part of an argument, just a random compliment.

  Laurel pushes back her chair with a great clatter and storms into the living room.

  “Oh dear.”

  “Oh, Larry, don’t worry, I am not having a tantrum.”

  She pulls a small red-bound volume from the bookshelf.

  “The Institutio Oratoria by Quintilian,” she says. “You gave me this book, Gravit.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “‘Above all…’” she reads, loudly, firmly. “‘Above all, see that the child’s nurse speaks correctly.’” She waves the little red volume at them. “Thus spake Quintilian.”

  “But our child doesn’t have a nurse,” says Larry.

  “That’s my point, Larry.”

  “And who are we to question Quintilian, whoever he is, when he’s at home?” Daphne. She crosses her arms. Smug expression. Why does ignorance make you feel superior, Daphne? Laurel thinks.

  “He wrote a treatise on education in the first century,” Gravit says.

  “And he said the nanny should be a philosopher. Where the hell am I going to find a philosopher nanny? And failing that, you have to find someone with good character, obviously, but, and I quote, ‘they should speak correctly as well. It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.’”

  “You’re afraid Charlotte will have a nanny accent?” Pamela Gravit, a little shocked.

  “Quintilian continues, and I quote: ‘We are by nature most tenacious of childish impressions, just as the flavour first absorbed by vessels when new persists, and the colour imparted by dyes to the primitive whiteness of wool is indelible.’”

  “Laurel! You’re a horrible snob,” Daphne cries out.

  “But I’ll go off to work and teach other people’s children and come home to some babel of Oliver Twist, Lucky Charms, Peter Tosh, Boris Badenov, Topo Gigio…”

  “Pepé le Pew. You forgot Pepé le Pew, you horrible xenophobe. Yes, yes, we must perpetuate the purity of accent of our forefathers, the noble people of Larchmont, for there alone lies truth and beauty…”

  They are all laughing, and laughing at her. Not one of them understands, not even Larry. Not even Daphne, Daphne least of all, with her hungry careerism, her judgments and decrees. Not even me, Laurel thinks. Do I care how a baby pronounces baby words? No. But I want to be there to hear them however she says them. I want to stay home with my baby and hear her. I want to stay home with Charlotte.

  “The worst defense for stay-at-home motherhood ever,” Daphne is saying. “Protect the child from the bad pronunciation influences of the lower classes. Because we are such aristocrats!”

  And there is more laughter, and Laurel knows what she sounds like. “I know I sound crazy or even worse…”

  “Worse,” they all say.

  “But language matters, doesn’t it?” She turns desperately to her husband, to her headmaster, to her sister. “Doesn’t it?”

  It does, it is what holds us together and tears us apart. Why is her own language failing her now? Why can’t she just say what she means? That she wants to be there for every word, every sputter of meaning and need, every demand, every refusal, every discovery of every name of every morsel of the universe.

  “Do you want Charlotte to grow up to be a Roman orator? Because that’s what Quintilian is talking about,” Gravit is saying. He is not smirking, like Daphne, but he is not capable of smirking.

  “Well, I don’t want her to be a Roman orator,” says Larry, the traitor. “I mean, if that’s what she sets her mind on, of course I will support her in her decision, but—”

  Very funny, Larry. Betrayed for a bad joke. “Do you want Charlotte to be a bad-flavored vessel?”

  “Laurel, really…”

  “I gave you the book to encourage you to come back,” Gravit says gently. Another traitor. “Not to indulge in elitist fear fantasies. There is no passage that says a mother should give up her job, her career, because she is
worried about the babysitter’s accent.”

  “It’s hardly a career. It’s kindergarten.”

  “Teaching is a career,” Gravit says, somber with dignity. “More than a career. It’s a vocation.”

  “It’s not like you’ll never see Charlotte,” says the worst traitor of all, Daphne. “You’ll be home in the afternoon. Isn’t that why mothers become teachers in the first place?”

  “It’s a vocation,” Gravit insists. “A vocation.”

  “The afternoon? By then the primitive whiteness of the wool will be dyed.”

  “Whiteness?” they all cry. “Aha!”

  Then there is an embarrassed silence. Because this, Laurel realizes, has been the subtext for them, the awful, reeking subtext.

  The primitive whiteness of fucking wool? Good god. They have badgered her and badgered her, and she has exploded into a first-century Roman racist.

  Mrs. Gravit is politely yammering, filling the vacuum. “The stuffing is just delicious. I’d love to get the recipe.”

  Laurel puts her head in her hands. Why can’t they understand? Being with Charlotte is not doing nothing. It is doing everything. It is everything. It’s not the accent of the words, it’s being there to hear the words, to hear Charlotte pulling the world toward her, word by word. Laurel wants to be home not to protect Charlotte’s speech, but to listen to her speak it, to listen to her, to listen.

  “It’s not the accent,” she says.

  She thinks of all the babysitters’ accents in the park, a great jumble of laughing and singing and cooing at fussy babies, cajoling and bribing of tired, disobedient toddlers. She wants to sit in the park with Charlotte and listen to this music bestowed on the English language forever. She wants to listen to Charlotte join in. “I just said that about accents because Quintilian said it. And all of you think it’s selfish and weak to be a stay-at-home mother.”

  A general murmur—no, no of course not, murmur murmur, we just want what’s best, murmur murmur …

  “It’s not the accent. It’s language. The birth of language.”