by Jancee Dunn
Vi’s daughter, Pamela, was an artist who lived in Taos. She in herited some of the flamboyance of her mother—the trailing scarves and big jewelry—but what was missing was the Big Personality. Pamela was querulous and needy and drifted from one “creative” job to the next—managing a gallery that sold silver Native American jewelry, making serviceable pottery to sell at trade shows. She had never married but lived with a shadowy jack-of-all-trades named Ozzy, whose distinguishing characteristic was a thick beard the exact texture and rusty brown color of a coir welcome mat.
Pamela did phone Vi frequently, but it was often with requests for money, and Vi dutifully wrote out the checks. At other times she would call after a therapy session to excavate long-buried hurts. Vi would never dream of going to a “headshrinker.” She liked to focus on the future.
I knew that Vi thought of me as a surrogate daughter. She was attentive to me in that spotty, offhanded way that well-meaning but self-involved people are, but the effort on her part was touching. Our bond proved to her that she was capable of nurturing, but her remorse stemmed not from her long absences from and early disinterest in her children but the fact that she harbored no real guilt about it.
“…so the next man with whom I am having dinner is a physician named Reed,” Vi was saying. “We shall see. He’s in his late seventies. He has false teeth, which I think I can live with. I don’t think it’s a—what do you kids call it? A deal breaker. Am I saying it correctly?”
I nodded. “I have so many deal breakers that I can barely get past a crush.” Even when I was with Adam, I rarely harbored even a mild infatuation. My crushes were fragile organisms that withered at the smallest infraction—if I heard a man use a common grammar error such as “between you and I,” for instance.
I told Vi about watching in dismay as I sat across from a handsome production assistant in a coffee shop and as he ate, out popped a thick tongue like a Pez dispenser to meet his forkful of potato salad in midair. This was one of my many pet peeves. “For the whole meal, it was as if his tongue was independent from his body and just got impatient,” I said as she hooted. “And I just felt like the whole lizard-tongue habit was too much to take on. What if we got married and when it was time to feed him a ceremonial bite of cake, he unfurled that tongue, to be captured on video for eternity? Then years pass, nothing changes, except it’s a thinner, dryer tongue that jets out.”
“You are outrageous,” Vi said, laughing as she wiped her eyes. “Well, then, for me, a deal breaker would be ill-maintained dentures.”
“At least you never have to hear the words ‘and this tattoo on my back is the Chinese symbol for prosperity.’”
“Better that than hairy ears. Oh, it’s hard to be a single girl nowadays.” She brightened as Mrs. Postiga reappeared with two bowls of butterscotch pudding crowned with twin frills of whipped cream. “Gorgeous!” she cried, clapping her hands.
After dinner, she put some MGM musical soundtracks on the “hi-fi” and taught me dance steps from her early days on the Broadway stage. “I was never that great of a dancer,” she said, panting just a little as she deftly executed a few twirls. “I never had any solos, let’s put it that way. But I worked harder than anyone.”
Then we retired to her vast gold and cream mirrored dressing room so she could apply “war paint” to my face. My natural look pained Vi, so I periodically allowed her to make me up in the vain hopes that I might be converted to her way of thinking. She made me take a seat on a pink satin padded chair as she busily arranged an armada of cosmetics on the dressing table.
“I still pinch myself when I look around this room,” said Vi. “When Father died in the war, my mother, my sister, Gladys, and I moved from our farm in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to a cold-water flat in Kansas City. Mother had never worked before, but she had to support us children, so she…Where is that eyebrow pencil?”
“So she took work as a seamstress,” I prompted.
“Oh, yes, I must have told you. So she took work as a seamstress and we never had any money, but once a week Mother would give me a nickel so that I could see a new picture on Friday as soon as it came out.” She held an eyebrow pencil up to my brows to perfectly match the color. “I waited all week to go to the pictures! And my favorite scenes were of ladies getting ready for a party in their enormous dressing rooms, with maids scurrying about and flowers arriving. I vowed that when I grew up, I would have a dressing room the size of the entire cold-water flat that I was raised in. Well, lo and behold.”
I picked up one of the lipsticks that she had placed carefully on the table and opened it. It was shrunken and dry, liked cracked mud. “How old is this lipstick?” I demanded.
She grabbed it and examined it, adjusting her glasses. “Hm. I don’t know. But lipstick doesn’t really go bad. In fact, I prefer an older lipstick because the pigment gets richer.”
“Vi, what are you talking about?” She ignored me, glancing into the mirror and rearranging her lacquered swirl of reddish hair. “I really must make an appointment,” she said absently. Vi had a “girl” in midtown who had maintained her trademark coif for the past three decades. Once I joined Vi on her weekly trip to “Ilsa of New York” and met Ilsa herself—a “girl” of fifty-two. I inquired about Ilsa’s additional salons—the “of New York” implied that there were others—in Gstaad, perhaps, or Monte Carlo.
“No others,” Ilsa said shortly. “Is only New York.” Ilsa had what Vi would call panache.
Vi peered at my face and then applied some bat-wing eyeliner. “You really have beautiful eyes, Lillian. You must emphasize them more. And look at your skin. Dry, dry, dry. You are neglecting yourself.”
From Vi’s 1967 beauty book, Is That Really Me?:
We gals take care of everyone in our lives, but I firmly believe that we should pamper ourselves too. That is why once a month, without fail, I unplug the telephone and have a day just for me. I start by drawing a nice, hot bubble bath. I close my eyes and listen to soothing music. Then I put on a robe and do whatever I please for the whole glorious day—watercolor painting, watching talk shows all morning, making a lavish lunch just for me—including a generous piece of blueberry cheesecake!
Then I treat my skin with a special masque. First I apply cleansing cream to one of my electric complexion brushes and give my face a thorough scrub. This brings blood to the surface of the skin, essential for a glowing look. While my face is still moist, I apply a masque. Effective beauty treatments needn’t be expensive—they can come right from your refrigerator. Luxury is not about cost! Mayonnaise makes a wonderful face masque, as does cod-liver oil (and don’t forget your neck). A famous comedienne I know uses a purée of bananas and sour cream, and she has the complexion of a newborn baby.
Vi buzzed around me, vigorously brushing my hair. “It just lies flat on your head,” she fretted. “You need volume.” As she teased the back of it into an unwieldy pouf, she said casually, “About this Christian. I know you might be anxious about the sex. It’s been quite a while since you were intimate with anyone but Adam, after all.” She paused, brush in hand. I nodded cautiously and she went on.
“When Morty died—and he really was my one great love affair—I felt that having relations with someone else was betrayal. But I’ll be honest. My real worry was letting anyone else see me in dishabille. As you know, I’m comfortable with my body even though I’m not in the bloom of youth, but I kept wondering: What if my date wants me to do something that I can’t bring myself to do? What if some new sexual technique has been invented that’s too far out for me?” She shrugged. “The problems were far more pedestrian, as it turned out.” She leaned forward confidentially. “One of my paramours had a problem with impotence,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “You know me, Lillian: I tell it like it is. I hope this doesn’t shock you.”
It did not. Vi’s tell-it-like-it-is pronouncements were fairly tame, but I did wonder just how much she got around.
“The point is, you can always confide in
me once you become sexually active again,” she said. Her voice was steady but her cheeks were flushed by the attempt to be “modern,” and I fought the urge to grab her in a hug. I had a similar impulse when she patted my hand and told me I could extend my sabbatical another month, because it was clear that she was desperate to have me back at work again and managing her every minute.
Later that night, as I drowsed under an old-fashioned pink chenille bedspread in the guest room, I was enveloped by a deep peace. A soft knock at the door roused me. “Thought you might want this,” whispered Vi, tiptoeing in and placing a white satin sleep mask on my bedside table. “I can’t abide any light. Good night, my dear.”
“That’s so thoughtful, Vi. Thank you.” I knew she wanted to tell me that she loved me but she was too shy. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to say.
chapter fifteen
Ginny was due to arrive at one, so I waited at my bedroom window, slightly irritated that my eyes were trained to the driveway like a springer spaniel’s. She was never late, and sure enough, her white rental car pulled in at 12:55. I watched her from behind a sheer curtain as she pulled her luggage out of the backseat. Her dark hair was cut in a shoulder-length bob that was a bit longer in the front, which for Ginny was very edgy. Her crisp hairstyles never looked dated in family photos—no embarrassing frippery, no perms or orange splotch of Sun-in, no Courtney Love baby barrettes. Hm. Black pants, slim black coat. What was with the high-heeled boots? Why was she in business casual to sit in my parents’ den? Even as a kid, she dressed formally, wearing shoes in the house and eschewing jeans. She always looked neat and clean and a little austere. I glanced down at my frayed bedroom slippers, which had spread and flattened from age so that they resembled scuba flippers.
Ginny closed the car door and turned to look straight into my eyes. Hi, Lily, she mouthed, and waved. I waved back. How did she see me?
“Don! She’s here!” my mother shouted. I lingered in the hallway as my parents stampeded for the door like there was a Christmas Eve sale at Best Buy.
“How was your flight?” my father cried.
“Completely painless,” she said, giving him a hug. Then she turned to me. “Come here, Lily Bear,” she said, using the childhood nickname that released unexpected tears as I hugged her. When would I ever stop crying? Ginny was forty-one, but her pale face was unlined except for a small crease between her brows. She studied me with a slight frown as I talked, her gray-blue eyes ranging over me with an intensity that I only got used to around the third day of being with her. Occasionally she stroked my hair or took my hand in hers. I envied the easy way she was so physically demonstrative. I just couldn’t sling an arm chummily around someone’s shoulders. The most natural move I could make was a sort of clumsy, Lennie Small–style petting.
Lunch, complete with genuine rattan “company” place mats rather than the usual vinyl ones, resembled a small press conference, with Ginny smoothly taking questions from the three of us. From my father: How was Raymond’s practice? “He’s working so hard,” Ginny said with a sigh. Raymond was an endocrinologist and director of the diabetes program at the Dean Medical Center in Madison. “He just implemented an after-school program for kids with diabetes so they can go to the center and get their blood checked, and then hang out, play games, go on computers,” she said. My mother glowed; my father nodded approvingly.
My relationship with Raymond was cordial, if distant. In his dealings with me, he was charming but terse, as if there were a patient waiting behind me. If I sat next to him during a long family dinner and our conversation went on a little too long, he would start to nod more vigorously, muttering uh-huh, uh-huh as if he were prodding some sort of growth on me. That was my cue to wrap it up, even if we lapsed into silence afterward, Raymond with a pleasant but slightly tight smile on his face. He walked on an invisible street in which each encounter was brief, jocular, and informative, and then he was free to continue down the road.
Another question from the lady in the back: How are my adorable grandkids? Did you tell them Grandma misses them?
My mother kept a rotating series of framed photos of Blake and Jordan on a shelf in the kitchen next to her decorative basket of mail. Until recently there was a photo of Adam and me in front of a pile of pumpkins at a farm stand. He’s hugging me too tightly, and I’m laughing. I noticed that my mother had discreetly swapped it out for one of me standing in a field of sunflowers. Adam had taken it during a trip to Italy, so the ghost of him still hovered off-camera.
“Your grandson is looking forward to his fifth birthday,” Ginny was saying. “And he told me he wants to learn Chinese! Do you believe it? His friend May is Chinese, and I guess he got it into his head.”
I broke in. “Or you inserted it into his head. A five-year-old taking Chinese lessons? Do they really know what they want at that age? When I was five, I wanted to fly.”
“I think it’s smart,” said my father through a mouthful of turkey sandwich. “Gotta get a jump. China has the fourth largest economy in the world. You see that article in Time magazine? Pretty soon we’ll all need to speak Chinese just to keep up. I’ll tell you something, those Chinese aren’t afraid of hard work, boy. Unlike kids in this country who can’t even be bothered to get after-school jobs anymore.”
He was cranking up for Goddamn American Kids Who Think They Can Just Walk Outside and Pluck an iPod Off a Tree, so my mother stepped in with a question about Ginny and Raymond’s hunt for a new house. They had “outgrown” their home and were forever forwarding photos of new candidates to my folks, who excitedly dissected each e-mail.
Ginny took a delicate bite of sandwich and swallowed. “Do you remember that last set of photos I sent, of the house built in 1820? We’re really serious about it. They’ve kept a lot of the period detail, but we’d need to reno the kitchen. It’s on an acre, which is the minimum that we would want. It borders a conservation easement, so of course that’s a major plus. And you saw the six-on-six leaded windows, right?”
Ginny possessed the sort of grown-up knowledge that I had mistakenly assumed I would magically acquire someday. She knew her wines (we always looked beseechingly at her when we were out to dinner and a list was produced). She knew her jazz musicians, her poets, her architects.
My parents’ eyes were shining as Ginny went on about the gabled slate roof and the mature plantings in the backyard. Retired parents love to talk about real estate. They love it. They used to come into Manhattan and make a day of looking at Adam’s apartment listings.
“All those windows might lose heat,” my father gibbered happily. “And didn’t you say that it had well water? You’d better get that tested.”
My mother hadn’t touched her sandwich. “I think you should keep the original color of the house, white with black shutters. It’s a classic.”
“A classic!” my father brayed.
Ginny dabbed her lips with a cloth “company” napkin. “Well, before we sign any papers, we’d like you both to come take a look. We’ll fly you there because you’d be doing us a favor.”
Oh, for the love of Christ. “We’ll fly you there.” Which sounds so much better than “We’ll pick up the ticket for $198.” Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!
I shook my head to clear it, suddenly ashamed. For as long as I could remember, a parallel dialogue ran in my head when Ginny held forth, followed by self-recrimination. Ginny was entitled to buy a house, and it was generous that she offered to fly my parents to their place and to involve them in a decision she could easily make herself; she was probably humoring them. And she wasn’t lording it over me. When she made the offer, her eyes had flicked discreetly, almost imperceptibly, to my face, and I knew she felt a momentary spasm of self-consciousness.
After lunch, Ginny and I did the dishes as my mother pulled out her recipe binder to plan dinner. Because of our special guest, she was making a “fancy” dish. “Ginny, you’re not a big fan of meat, right?” my mother said absently as she paged through.
“Not really,” said Ginny, drying a bowl. “I mean, I’ll do it once a week or so. The kids eat more meat than I do. They love their chicken nuggets, even though Raymond says that there’s an average of thirty-six ingredients in addition to the chicken.” That Raymond was a one-man party.
My mother put on her reading glasses and scanned one stained clipping. “Well, I was going to make chicken enchiladas, I remember you like them, but—”
Ginny circled her arms around my mother’s shoulders. “Oh, Mom. That would be great. Sounds delicious.”
Again: Why was I annoyed? She was being polite and enthusiastic. Was it the slightly royal tone? Ah. Chicken. Mmyesss, poultry will suffice. But she didn’t actually use a royal tone. No, it had to be the once-a-week meat.
I blotted our “good” rattan place mats with a sponge and began unloading glasses from the dishwasher. “Why do you eat meat once a week, anyway?” I asked.
She stopped drying dishes and faced me. “Because it stops me up,” she said in a low tone.
My mother looked up sharply from her recipe book. “Do you know, Ginny, meat stops me up, too! The older I get, honest to Pete, the worse it is! I’ve been using fiber supplements, but somehow they have the opposite effect.”
Even Ginny’s bowel activities had the power to fascinate, although to be fair, my mother perked up at any mention of fiber.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said, holding up a glass. “There’s enough fiber in these glasses because you pack the dishwasher so tightly that nothing ever gets clean. Look at this.” I held it up to the light to show the thick layer of sediment at the bottom. “Just add water and chew.”