by Marge Piercy
Except for breakfast, which in itself seemed to take two hours minimum at the garden apartment, with everyone wanting something different, meals were being handled at the Blue Lobster. Daria tried to keep herself from hanging all over Ross, but she was immensely relieved to be with him. The moment he appeared, her stock rose. Her brothers were all fond of him. In fact, he had independently friendly relationships with Cesaro and Tony.
One aspect of Ross she would never cease to appreciate was his warmth toward her family. His own parents were rotten snobs, who had cut him off for five years just because he had married her. What did they have against her? Only that she was Italian, and therefore not a twirpy suburban Wasp, not a bland Midwestern corn-fed cheerleader, blond as a palomino. Only that she had been raised Catholic, although she had made it clear to them she was indifferent if not hostile to the Church and had no intention of raising children under the power of the nuns who had lorded it over her early schooling. Only that she came from the East Boston working class, although she had put herself through Boston State. She had never figured out what the Walkers had to feel superior about. They were plain-looking unimaginative middle-class people who had seemed always to expect more from Ross than any human being could deliver, who seemed to feel superior more because of what they weren’t—poor, Black, Jewish, Catholic—than because of anything they had been or done.
Ross was clear of his parents’ intolerance. He had taken to her brothers just as they had welcomed him into the family. Tony had started off in the insurance business with Cesaro, but now he was a public adjuster, living with his new wife Monica and new baby boy in Belmont. Daria loved Tony, but she couldn’t spend ten minutes in his house without beginning to redecorate it silently, beginning by throwing out everything in the place and scraping the walls. Sometimes when she passed a furniture store, she would notice in the window a garish and outlandishly expensive bedroom set swarming with gilt cupidons and think at once of Tony. Tony was the best looking of the boys, slender still, favoring tapered well-cut Italian suits she knew to be expensive but always found a little sleazy.
Cesaro, who like her had married a Wasp, was stolid. Chunky, thick-waisted, already balding, he wore Harris Tweeds and rep ties. If clothes from the British Isles had been forbidden, he would have stood before them naked. When Prince Charles had married, Cesaro had given a party at five in the morning for friends to watch on television eating kippers and Scottish salmon and baskets of boiled eggs. His teenage daughter Trish did something odd with horses, teaching them to dance, and was always going to obscure meets. Trish was midway in age between Tracy and Robin and got on with both. Cesaro and Vinnie had a house as old as hers in Lincoln with an immense and functional barn housing Trish’s horse. Chester was what his business card read, but all his friends called him Cesaro; as he had once told her, he liked his name. From East Boston her family had spread out westward scattershot through the suburbs of Boston: Lexington, Lincoln, Belmont, and Tony’s first wife in Bedford.
Daria knew she had always been Nina’s favorite child to complain to, but that was not the kind of favorite she had always longed to be. She had wanted to be the pet, the way Gussie had been, or the big important one like Joe or the darling fussed over like Tony. Cesaro was most like her, in the middle, a little pushed aside in the family.
Ross was her treasure and her worth in her family’s eyes. If she wanted something done or not done, she would pass on the request to Ross and he would make it. If she spoke for herself, nothing would happen. Ross made her respectable to them. Her career, which brought home a pleasant if clearly secondary income and had given her a measure of fame so that she was accustomed to people doing a double take when they heard her name and making at least some fuss, was invisible to her brothers except for Cesaro. Yesterday she had said to Joe, when she was trying to establish contact with him, “We’re both in the food business.”
He had looked at her blankly. “You mean you cook for your husband, you call that a business?”
Robin, Tracy and Trish were bored and a little rebellious. In the morning she drove them to a beach, insisting they not get sunburned and be ready to be picked up in two hours. The rest of the time she used TV to baby-sit them as she had sometimes when her girls were little and bored on rainy days.
Pops said to her, “You take care of Nina’s things.”
Marie was blunter. “That room is full of junk. She saved like a pack rat. You got to clean it out. You can’t leave it for him to deal with, it’s not fair.”
On her fell then the task of sorting through Nina’s drawers and closets, discarding the worst and bundling useful objects for Goodwill. She did not mind, for she did not want strangers or even the wives of her brothers going through Nina’s things, not because they were precious or valuable, but precisely because they were not.
Nina had worn mostly floppy faded housedresses. When going out, she had put on polyester waffle knits in bright harsh shades of peach sherbet, acid yellow, Pepto-Bismol pink, laxative green. Once in a while during Daria’s march through the stuffed closets, she found a present she herself had given Nina, carefully wrapped in plastic: a cardigan embroidered with birds, a dressing gown in a flower print chiffon, a woven silk shawl, all looking as if they had never been worn. What fit her she took back, for they would always remind her of Nina. What didn’t fit her she offered Gussie, who was a size or two bigger than Daria.
The first several drawers were crammed with worn, stained underwear Daria discarded. But in one bottom drawer she was surprised to find a batiste and a silk slip with fine hand embroidery, apparently never worn. Laid in with them was an unopened bottle of L’Air du Temps perfume one of them must have given her and two linen handkerchiefs edged with lace. Nina was waiting, Daria thought, for a special day that never came, a day that would be worthy of the perfume, the handkerchief, the best slip. With tears running slowly down her face, Daria took the prettiest slip for the funeral home. It would be big for Nina now; no matter. Who would know the slip was too big under the fancy pink lace dress Gussie had selected in consultation with Marie?
In the same drawer she found a fan that looked vaguely familiar. Then she remembered. When she was fifteen, she had brought it home one hot August night, taking the Blue Line back to East Boston. She had gone to Chinatown with her girlfriends. The fan bore stylized birds in tones of black and pale grey against burnt orange ribs. She had bought it so Nina could fan herself, sitting out in the yard by the arbor on summer nights. Instead, Nina laid it away carefully with her best underwear, for some glorious occasion that had someday to arrive and for which she would then be prepared in clean raiment. A second coming of love?
Daria wept over the fan, then she took that too. She would give it to Tracy, who would play with it and break it, which was what it had been meant for, Daria’s dollar fan from 1956. She had had a crush on a sailor that summer, but fortunately nothing had come of it, or she might well have stayed, stuck in East Boston like Gussie.
She took the afghan off the bed. She wanted it, but so did Gussie.
“I remember it too. I remember it just as well as you do.”
“You were too young.”
“You can’t tell me what I remember and don’t remember. It’s still pretty. And warm. Jackie and Bobbie have a room that’s always cold. With all the fires around and the old wiring, I’m scared to try an electric blanket. This would be perfect.”
Daria could not stand up to a cold child. She relinquished the afghan.
“Did you notice how nice I did Mama’s hair?” Gussie’s own was up on enormous pink rollers. “Now I’ll do yours.”
“Never mind. I have to pick up the girls.”
“But you need to get your hair done before tomorrow. We have the viewing tonight and tomorrow the funeral’s at eleven. It isn’t respectful.”
Daria hoped Gussie would forget about it. Once in a while, when she was about to appear on television, she did have her hair done, but the hairdressers always made s
uch a fuss about how she had to keep herself up, as if she were some sort of mortgage payments. If she was faced with the choice between doing her nails or cleaning up the iris bed, if she had to choose between just enough time to run to Bloomingdale’s to buy a dress or make a special dinner, she would divide the irises and cook the vitello tonatto, and figure she would be herself and that would be all right.
The viewing was hard. It was Nina lying there. The problem was not so much that the undertakers had done a good job, for the lipstick was smeared and a harsh coral, but that Nina looked lovely. It was her slenderness, in part; but mostly the expression on her face—relaxed, faintly smiling. “Mama was a pretty woman, you know?” Tony said in surprise. She nodded, too choked to speak.
“Of course she was a real looker, what did you think?” Pops said scornfully.
The absence of Nina’s usual expression made the difference. For years pain, disgust, depression had pulled her face downward. Now her features were relaxed and at seventy-three she looked fresher than Daria remembered her looking in twenty years. Hardest for Daria to endure was the sense of Nina’s wasted life. What had Nina ever done besides produce the six of them, and how much pleasure had come of that?
Tracy was sniffling beside her, while Robin looking uncomfortable moved closer to her father. Tracy mumbled, “She was always so sweet to us. She used to let us put on her jewelry and dress up in old white summer curtains. When the planes were coming over, she’d say things like, ‘Duck, here comes the San Francisco express right through the kitchen. Watch out for the wings.’”
She held Tracy’s hand. “What’s happening afterward?” she asked Pops. “They’re cremating her, right? What happens to her then?”
“We used to have the plot up in Billerica but we let that go. They kept raising the upkeep. Most everybody goes that route down here. It’s easier.”
“Then what? What happens to her ashes?”
Pops nodded at the undertaker, hovering in the doorway. “They’ll take care of them.”
“Take care? What does that mean?”
“They disperse them. It’s a service.”
“No!” she said. “I want her if you don’t. I want to take the ashes home.”
Pops patted her shoulder. “Sure, Dolly, sure. You take them. You talk to Mr. Andrews right now. I’m sure they don’t care.” She made the arrangements immediately.
When they sat on the folding chairs, Ross whispered, “What are you going to do with the ashes?”
“I don’t know!” The tears started again. “I’ll make a new garden for her in the yard. A rose garden. I’ll take up part of the perennial beds.”
“I don’t know if you can legally do that with human remains.”
“I don’t care, Ross. I’m going to take her home. I’m not going to let them throw her away or take her to the dump.”
Back at the apartment they drank wine as she spread out Nina’s costume jewelry on the coffee table to let Gussie, the wives and the girls pick through it. Nina had a surprising number of clunky screw-back or clip-on earrings with false pearls, glass beads, plastic twisted into the forms of flowers or animals. Pops used to bring his wife costume jewelry when the occasion called for a present or when he was making up with her after some escapade she had learned about. He had a friend who manufactured it in a neighborhood factory. The jewelry Nina wore, because it wasn’t real. Whenever they entertained or went out, she was weighed down with glittery necklaces, button earrings, big brooches pinning her breasts into her dress.
While the others were picking through the geegaws on the table, Daria went back to cleaning out the bedroom. The garbage of the ages filled Nina’s drawers, the brooches with missing stones, the shoes with thongs that had torn, the handbags whose clasps had snapped off, the white gloves that had lost their mates, the stockings with only one run: all waiting for a healing that would never descend, a use that would never be found. Unmercifully she threw into large plastic trash bags all the objects her mother could not bear to discard in the fervent belief that some good thing must finally be made of them. She wept and wept, quietly, hearing the loud cheerful voices in the living room. She was simply the more conscious of her relationship to Nina, perhaps, aware of how she had loved her mother, aware of how she had spent her life trying not to become her. Had Nina identified with those spoiled and mangled objects she protected and preserved?
Finally they could leave for the motel. At once she said good night to her daughters and fled into the air-conditioned room with Ross. He put his arms around her and rubbed her back, her shoulders, kneading the tension. “You bearing up okay, old kid? I couldn’t believe that trash you hauled out of there.”
“It’s hard, Ross, it’s hard. I’ll be glad when tomorrow’s over. I dread the funeral.”
“It’ll be boring, like all funerals, and then it’ll be over. You don’t want to stay down here to get your father settled?”
“Tony and Monica are staying on for a couple of days, and he has Joe.”
“He certainly does. Daria, you have to be a little warmer to Monica than you’ve been acting.”
That was Tony’s new wife. “I thought I was nice to everybody. Under the circumstances.”
“Old kid, you practically took that silver pin out of her hands.”
“But I gave that to Mama.”
“You were ten times as warm to everybody else. It’s not Monica’s fault you liked Gloria. Monica’s a nice girl. That’s the cutest damn little boy they have. Tony’s done it again.”
She ruffled his hair. “Just think. Robin’s of an age to marry soon enough and we’ll have grandchildren. Won’t that be strange and nice?”
He pulled free of her. “Don’t be in such a hurry to marry her off. People married far too young in our day.”
“I’m not in a hurry. But it will happen.” She had an urge to continuity tonight. Perhaps he was too possessive of Robin to want to imagine her marrying.
Even before the funeral at eleven, everybody was jockeying for telephone time to try to make reservations back. Joe was trying to argue the whole family into staying for Thanksgiving dinner at the Blue Lobster. Plenty of plane seats were available on Thanksgiving, but Wednesday everything was booked out of West Palm Beach and out of Fort Lauderdale too.
During the funeral, Ross was right, she did not weep. It was too polished, too generalized, too alien. Most of the local people who came had some connection with the Blue Lobster or were friends of Pops; she doubted if Nina had made two friends down here. Nina’s friends were back in East Boston. Daria had packed away small memorabilia for Liz and Patsy who still lived in the old neighborhood and who were still Nina’s best friends.
She found herself sitting through the service with her hands clenched in her lap, in a state of mute anger. With whom was she angry? With her father for flourishing? Nina had been a good woman by all the traditional values and rules, and what had it gotten her? The love of a daughter who had never been her favorite. A service by a priest who had never met her.
Afterward a woman came up to her, “You’re Daria, aren’t you?”
She was surprised by the first name. “You knew my mother?”
“I met her. Your father plays bridge with us. She was very proud of you. I have your hot weather cookbook, and your Italian one that’s dedicated to your mother and grandmother. I cook that lasagna all the time for company and everybody always loves it. I saw you on the Good Morning America show when you made that five minute chocolate cake. Is that in one of your books?”
“The Working Woman’s Kitchen. That’s in paperback now.”
“I wish I’d brought my books for you to sign, but I didn’t dare …”
The exchange restored her. Business as usual.
Afterward she drove the girls to the beach. In between the newest malls going up and the old-age condominiums they were erecting with sky-scraping cranes, patches of palmetto scrub still stood. She could not feel that the development was spoiling an attractive
landscape, although she knew she would feel differently if she were a great blue heron or an armadillo. On a sunny morning with the temperature 81 degrees, her daughters and Trish were alone on the beach except for a few surf fishermen. On the road above the public beach, however, the parking lot was crowded with trucks, vans, cars, a lively trade going on among them.
“Drugs,” Robin hissed. “It’s a bigger business than tourism.”
If so, these were the small-time operators. With her new dry energy she drove straight to the garden apartment and finished bundling trash for the pickup. Gussie, Robin and Tracy all were taken to the airport to wait for standby, but everybody else was resigned to spending one last night. Cesaro and family were booked on the same Thanksgiving morning plane as Ross and herself. That night everyone remaining sat at the family table in the kitchen of the Blue Lobster for a very early dinner, before the restaurant opened.
“What are you going to do now, Pops?” Tony asked. “Got any ideas?”
“Pops always has ideas,” Joe said, going around with the wine.
“I’m considering moving into one of those condos that provide for your old age. They give you meals, they give you maid service, they give you clean linens …”
“I bet they don’t give any of it away,” Cesaro said.
“They got a hospital right on the premises, nurse always on call. I been thinking about one of those.”
Ross said, “By the way, I notice a lot of building down here. I gather mortgage money is available. What’s the going rate?”
Within ten minutes Pops had brought the conversation back to his plans. He and Nina had always carried life insurance, and with the price of the garden apartment, that would buy him in for a studio. He had his Social Security, and with what Joe was paying him under the table, that would take care of the monthly charge.