There used to be a photo of his parents in the back hallway, the two of them at Stowe, before Sam was born; in the photo his mom leaned against a fence and his dad held their skis, kind of curving around her, both of them in tight pants and Norwegian sweaters. You could see why they were drawn together, they’d been a good-looking couple, his mom petite and dark haired, his dad bigger, his hair sandy back then. Sam got the worst of his parents: his dad’s nose, his mother’s mouth. His lips were too fat. God, now he was thinking like his mother, who was way too focused on her appearance, how old she looked, whether she was thin enough.
“Don’t worry about her, she’s a moron,” Sam said, about Mrs. Bemis. He wished he could talk about real things with his mom. He wished he could tell Mom to stop being a moron too.
* * *
The afternoon Momma flew home to Norfolk, Virginia made herself go out, to pretend that today was a normal day. She would get on with things. A job: she had to find something. She’d paid the bills that had piled up, and she was no math whiz, but she could see that Oliver’s pension—she’d gotten the estimate from the college business office—would cover nothing more than the monthly mortgage. A smaller house, sell the car? Maybe she could take a loan against her future inheritance from Momma.
With the college closed for Christmas vacation, little downtown Westfield was quiet, and she stopped at the college bookstore to look for a few small gifts for Rebecca and for her own sisters. She dawdled at the “In the News” table; Kate Millett’s tome Sexual Politics had been propped up next to Diary of a Mad Housewife; and next to them, Shirley Chis holm’s biography Unbought and Unbossed. Louise had called Virginia about Shirley Chisholm, something about equal rights and chipping in money to bring the congresswoman up to Clarendon, and Virginia had practically hung up on her. But she wouldn’t think about that now.
Finding herself in the “New Fiction” section, she picked up Islands in the Stream, the posthumous Hemingway that was supposed to be terrible—she’d get it for Oliver; he’d enjoy spouting off about it. With a sharp intake of breath, she realized her mistake, and she circled the store, counting her breaths. She stopped to look at the ornaments in the Christmas-decor section. She was fine. She made herself focus on two girls, late high school maybe, one of them holding an unlit cigarette, the other laughing and lifting a bunch of plastic mistletoe.
At least Rebecca wasn’t a true teenager yet. If Rebecca had been, say, sixteen when Oliver died, she’d be smoking grass or dropping acid. Rebecca’s childish pudginess was gone, but she was still willing to wear the matching crocheted vests and berets that June made for her.
There’d been a heroin overdose at the high school last year, a shock because all the unrest and upset, all the marches, the love-ins, the sit-ins, the drugs, the riots, the police beating up protesters, the Kent State killings—all of it remained far away from Westfield. Sure, that group of Clarendon boys had taken over the administration building for a few hours last year, but no one had been hurt, and the drama seemed to pass as soon as it was over. The thirty activist boys had been put into county jails around the state for thirty days, then expelled. I just thank God Clarendon’s not coed, Eileen from next door liked to say. Can you imagine? Eileen’s older daughters, a high school junior and senior, were a handful, according to Eileen. Virginia hadn’t bothered to point out the obvious, that a coed Clarendon would cut in half the dangerous allure it held for Eileen’s daughters. Still, the world’s dangers remained exponentially far from Rebecca’s orbit, and therefore far from Virginia’s orbit too.
On her way to art supplies—colored pencils for Rebecca’s stocking—she passed through the textbook section. Above a small pyramid of books, Oliver’s name caught her eye:
Professor Desmarais, History
Spring semester Tues.–Thurs.
Early Modern Europe, The Flourishing of the Holy Roman Empire
She wondered if the books would have to be sent back. No, of course someone else would fill in, someone else would run Oliver’s classes, lead his discussions and grade his students’ papers. Her tears flowed, as usual. She wiped at them and went to buy her books, including the stupid Hemingway, which she’d neglected to put back. She tried to smile at the cashier—a young woman, who looked a little alarmed at the sight of this crying, dripping middle-aged lady on the other side of the counter—and fled to her car.
At home, she found a package in the mailbox. She sat at the kitchen table to open it. From Momma, an unwrapped book that Momma must have mailed the second she got home to Norfolk. “How I miss you girls! Found this for you both,” Momma’s note said. “Thought you might like it.” Heloise All Around the House: a whole book’s worth of housekeeping hints from Heloise. God, did her mother need to find yet another way to remind her that she was a bad housewife? Bad housewidow.
Rebecca had always been too much of a neatnik, and she had this strange habit, a kind of compulsion, to clip out Heloise and Dear Abby columns, practical hints and recipes and little spiritual sayings, and paste them into scrapbooks. An analyst would say that Rebecca was trying to make up for her mother’s lackadaisicalness. And now Virginia’s own mother was telling her the same damn thing. Stay home, Virginia, and take care of your child, your house, yourself. Or better yet, think about coming back to Norfolk, starting back where you belong.
Momma was only trying to help, but it felt awful. Her fingers traced the metal banding around the kitchen table. She put her head down on its cold laminate top and let herself cry until she heard the back door open and felt the puff of cold air enter the house—Rebecca home from school. She shoved the book in the junk drawer, then ran for the bathroom to rinse her face and wipe her eyes.
Chapter Four
Ski day: Rebecca remembered before she was fully awake. Last night after dinner she’d asked Mom to drop her off at the Clarendon Ski Bowl this morning, because they were more than halfway through January and she hadn’t skied even once this winter.
“Skiing?” Mom had said in a surprised voice, like she’d forgotten that skiing even existed.
“At the Ski Bowl. I just need a ride tomorrow.”
“Sure, hon.” But now Mom was talking about her own skis and how cold it was going to be, maybe too cold, and how she hadn’t skied at all last year. Mom wanted to ski too.
“I’ll find someone to bring me home, you don’t need to go,” Rebecca said. But Mom had decided, and now Rebecca was stuck—she’d have to ski with Mom.
Every day, another first. First time going skiing since Dad died. It wasn’t like they’d skied every run together, it was just that skiing was her and Dad’s thing. And Mom only sometimes came along.
When Rebecca got to the kitchen, Mom stood at the far counter laying out bread and ham for sandwiches. Mom was half-dressed for skiing, long underwear and slippers on her bottom half, red turtleneck on top, and she smiled at Rebecca in that way she had now of pretending to have a good time. “Eggs or cereal?”
“Cereal.” Rebecca reached for the Cheerios, poured them into the bowl Mom handed her. She didn’t know why she felt so provoked just now. “I wish you weren’t so sad all the time,” Molly had said at morning break yesterday. “I mean, you didn’t even hear what I was saying,” Molly complained, her voice scratchy with irritation. “Do you even care?” Molly had been talking about Todd, something about Todd’s hockey team. Molly and Todd were going together now.
“We don’t need to rush to get out there, because it’s really cold this morning,” Mom said. “Here’s the paper.” Mom had left the newspaper folded open to the women’s page. It used to drive Mom crazy that Rebecca had to cut things out of the newspaper—she’d heard her parents arguing about it. Dad thought Mom was overreacting, Becca’s just interested in the world, he’d said, and an organized kid, nothing wrong with that.
Rebecca couldn’t remember why she’d started clipping things out of the paper. It was weird, she knew. M
aybe it was because Dad had been so happy that she could read when she was little, and they’d sounded out newspaper headlines together at breakfast. Or maybe it was a way for her to keep track of all the things she might need to know when she was older. But ever since she was six or so, she’d loved how Heloise could make something out of nothing. Heloise wrote about how to turn old pantyhose into scrubby-sponges, how to use a piece of bread to rub fingerprints off wallpaper. Things you’d never think of.
And Dear Abby, she loved Dear Abby too, for Abby’s snappy answers, especially to obnoxious or stingy people. Anyway, Rebecca used to cut out hints, recipes, comics, bits of advice columns, then go through all her clippings once a month, pasting her favorites into scrapbooks. She liked getting the dots of glue just right: too little and things wouldn’t stick, too much would bleed through and make the pages stick together. She had four full scrapbooks and three empty ones because Mom and Dad always gave her a scrapbook for Christmas. Those scrapbooks were stupid; she was too old for that kind of thing.
Out the kitchen window she could see Molly’s backyard, and the snow fort that Molly’s brothers had made last weekend—it was still holding up. She and Molly used to play that way, turning Molly’s porch roof into a rocket ship and themselves into astronauts. She missed those days. She missed playing with Molly, their long games of pretend and wandering around on the Clarendon campus. Now they just sat on Molly’s bed and listened to Molly’s sisters’ Rolling Stones albums. And Molly wanted to talk about Todd, or else she wanted to call Todd’s house and hang up and then call again.
Rebecca missed Dad.
She missed all the things she used to do, like walking over to Dad’s office in Clarendon Hall on half days. When she was little, she’d sit with Miss Hazel and draw pictures while Miss Hazel banged and dinged away on the typewriter.
One time about a year ago, Dad had a committee meeting, and she and Dad walked across campus to the English department. The English department had its own little library, with bookshelves dividing the library into alcoves, and an upstairs gallery with a matching set of alcoves, a kind of balcony that circled the room. Each alcove held a comfortable chair and a lap desk. It was the kind of place where the Pevensie children would have done their homework, once they left Narnia and became kids again in London.
“Okay, Bec,” Dad had said. “Where do you want to sit, up or down?”
“Up,” she’d said. She’d seen this place plenty of times but had never actually hung out here, since it was on the other side of campus from Dad’s department, and she felt a tiny thrill mixed with embarrassment. They climbed a miniature spiral staircase and shuffled along a narrow gallery, where Rebecca picked an alcove with a red leather chair. Through the window she could see the Clarendon green, its crisscrossing paths. If only she could live here. Molly would love this too, she’d thought, but then stopped herself. She was way too old for pretend.
“And look, here’s Dickens if you get bored,” Dad had said, pulling an old leather-bound book off a shelf. She sat down, and Dad set the lap desk across the chair’s arms. He handed her a Coke, and left her there.
She started her math homework. Outside the window, two men in blue military uniforms crossed the green. She wondered if they were cold—they wore no coats over their uniforms. A minute later, one college boy darted up behind another and gave him a shove, so the other one tripped and had to break into a run to keep from falling. God, they were acting like sixth graders.
After a while another student entered the library, then a few more. One of them lifted an eyebrow, noting her presence. He was tall; he reminded her of a bird, and he had dark hair, longish and feathery. He smiled up at her as if he knew her, or as if the two of them shared a secret—hey, I still like the Narnia books, he might be saying—and plopped down on a couch. Hunched over a coffee table, he opened a thick book, scrawling in a notebook as he read.
The next time she looked up, Dad was greeting the birdlike boy, then motioning for her to come downstairs. She could hear a shrill hiss; a woman had come into the library and was setting a tray of cookies on a table near the French doors. Behind her, a big brass urn was making that hissing sound. The library had filled up, boys throwing their books on chairs and lining up for tea.
“Tea, Bec?” Dad said. “They serve tea here every afternoon.”
“Five cents a cup,” the birdlike college guy said, and Dad made introductions.
The college guy’s name was Sam. He was a sophomore from New York. “Jazz aficionado,” Dad said.
Rebecca followed Dad and Sam to the tea table. She picked Earl Grey tea and a sugar cookie while Dad spoke to the tea woman, dropping some coins into a money box. She followed Dad to a couch near French doors that looked out onto the library’s snowy lawn.
She drank her smoky tea out of a china cup and took occasional bites from the sugar cookie. The library felt both old-fashioned and serious, smelling of the tea and all the leather-bound books, while outside the sun shone at an angle and made the snow sparkle. It was as if she’d been dropped into a novel. If only Susan or Lucy Pevensie would pop in and take her on some kind of magical adventure on the other side of the bookshelves. God, don’t be so stupid, she scolded herself. This was just what college was like—tea and studying in the afternoon, and talking to professors as if you were all close friends.
Dad took off his glasses to clean them with his hankie, and the glasses left red indentations on the bridge of his nose as he said something to Sam about the jazz concert next weekend, the student-faculty jazz band. Maybe that was where she’d seen Sam before. Sam was talking too fast, and he blushed, as if he knew he was talking too fast but couldn’t stop himself.
The student-faculty jazz band was okay. At the concert in the fall, Dad had held his clarinet ready, even when he wasn’t playing, head nodding and toes tapping. Dad’s stomach jiggled as he tapped, his cheeks pink, sweat glistening around his temples.
But all of that was such a long time ago.
She missed Dad. She missed him every breakfast when he wasn’t there to pass her the paper, the smell of his leftover pipe smoke blending with the other morning smells of coffee, shaving cream and starched dress shirts. There was no one to talk to about how much she missed Dad, except Molly, who was sick of hearing about it. Molly had a boyfriend and she was moving on.
And today Rebecca would take her first downhill run of the season, and Dad wouldn’t be there to remind her to lean forward, to wave at her with his pole when she got ahead of him. Even good days were bad days now.
* * *
Foolishly, Virginia had taken the back way to get to the college’s little ski mountain, and the car slipped and fishtailed along the road’s curves. In the passenger seat, Rebecca kept her arms crossed over her chest, frowning and grim.
There was nothing Virginia could say to make Rebecca feel better. They’d gotten through Christmas; they’d driven down to Concord for a sad lunch with Oliver’s brother Charlie and wife and college-age son. And she and Rebecca had gotten through school vacation. One afternoon Virginia had felt compelled to make pound cake and they ate that for dinner with glasses of milk. When New Year’s Eve finally arrived, Rebecca went next door to Molly’s to spend the night, while Virginia sat in bed with Rebecca’s copy of Jane Eyre. She and Oliver had always made something French for New Year’s Eve dinner, a Burgundy wine with dinner (a Roy Rogers for Rebecca) and champagne afterward. Just their little family. Never a New Year’s Eve party.
She and Rebecca had made it all the way to the middle of winter, but now everything Virginia did felt like a mistake. No point in saying again to Rebecca that she was so very sorry that Daddy was gone, sorry he hadn’t taken better care of himself. She was sorry they’d been so late having kids; she was sorry that Rebecca would never get a sibling. Things hadn’t been perfect but Virginia missed Oliver in ways she couldn’t put into words, and she was undone and trying to put herself
back together, and surely Rebecca knew at least some of that, but of course Rebecca was even more undone, and that was what made her so grumpy and prickly.
“I’m sorry, we should have gone the other way—” Virginia began.
“I heard you fighting,” Rebecca said at the same time.
“What?”
“You were fighting, the week before. You weren’t being nice to Daddy.” She could hear the blame in Rebecca’s voice. Your fault, Mom.
“We might have had a little fight, Becca, but that’s just part of marriage. It wasn’t anything—” But she could have been a better wife. She could have done more to support Oliver’s career, like her friends Eileen and Gerda did. Gerda’s husband was dean of the faculty now; he’d leapfrogged far ahead of Oliver. “Let’s just think about skiing this morning,” she said, and Rebecca made a harrumphing sound.
Well. Rebecca had a right to be angry. Especially today, since skiing was Oliver’s area. He’d taught Rebecca how to hold onto the J-bar and ride the ski lift when she was a little thing, and every year he took her to watch the collegiate ski races during Winter Carnival weekend.
They parked, lugging their skis and poles and boots uphill to the lodge. Inside the lodge, Rebecca slipped away, stopping to talk to two of her classmates and sitting down with them to buckle on her ski boots instead of finding a table with Virginia.
At a table a respectable distance away from Rebecca, Virginia worked to get her feet into her heavy, barely used boots. The lodge always smelled of frying oil and woodsmoke. It was full this morning, other families suiting up, and Clarendon boys shouting to one another across the room. Two Clarendon boys tossed a football in the open space between the tables. Make the best of it, she told herself, just get on with the day. Still, she felt exposed, as if everyone around her was staring, feeling sorry for her: Oh, that widow, and my God, that poor child.
The Wrong Kind of Woman Page 4