“I didn’t tell you the most interesting thing of all,” Mimi said to Lily.
The game. Find something to interest Lily. Amuse Lily. Please Lily.
“Mm?” Lily asked languidly.
“Vincent’s new book is going to be about Welford.”
“Ten minutes with your mother,” Vincent said, “and you revert to type.”
Mimi was baffled, naturally. “What did I do?”
“First of all you made a mistake. I’m not writing a book about Welford and I never will. I am writiing a book and I am making some use of the Peekskill riots, which happened to occur near here and happened to involve many Welford inhabitants, a distinction you would assume if you were a writer instead of a hack.”
“I’ve never had any illusions about what I write,” Mimi said quietly.
“Ha!” Vincent began. “That’s what—”
“Oh, dear, Vincent,” Lily said with a yawn. “Why are you being a bad boy again?”
“Because that’s what I do when I’m here,” he said. “Or at least when you’re here. Can’t you see that? I’m Bad Boy and Beth here is Frail Waif and over in that corner ladies and gentlemen, weighing in at I’d say a good twenty pounds more than the last time I saw her, is Resident Earth Mother, Eternal Hostess, Keeper of the Shrine, Pollyanna the Clad Girl and you’d better be Glad, too, or else. She was a little more bearable than usual until you got here, Lily, old Mom. I’ll say that for her. But now you’ve arrived and she’s talking Basic Press Release again. . . . And looking in on the happy little Welford Heights crew, Mom, we find your oldest son, in fact your only son, writing a book about that quaint little series of events known as the Peekskill Riots. Now isn’t that just too delicious? And—”
“Now that your looks have improved a bit, Vincent,” Lily said, “you really should do something about your manners. I know your father never taught you any manners but God knows you’ve had plenty of time since then to pick them up.”
“It would be too easy for me to hate you,” Vincent said to Lily. “I resist the temptation. I worship you. The Goddess of Gall. Tell me what I can do for you, Goddess.”
“You can stop talking nonsense,” the Goddess fretted. “That’s what. You can say something interesting for a change.”
“Sure,” Vincent said, “only tell me what’ll interest you. Do you want to hear about Europe?”
“I suppose so.”
“Europe is in a state of chaos. What else would you like to hear about? My new book?”
“If you like.”
“I don’t like. I never like to talk about my books.”
She yawned. Uninterested in his irony. I felt a sudden change in his mood He became afraid of losing her. Afraid that she would just get up and leave the room, thus destroying the pitiful illusion that of the two of them he was the aggressor.
“I’ll tell you what I would like, though, Lil. I’d like to ask you some questions having to do with the book. How would you like to answer some questions?”
She shrugged.
“Not boring questions,” Vincent promised. “Interesting ones. About you. Like why did you fly back for the riots when you’d been out of the Party for so many years?”
“Because of her,” Lily said, jerking her head in my direction without looking at me. “She was having one of her breakdowns.” Making it sound as though I still had them.
Vincent was unnerved. Naturally it hadn’t occurred to him that an answer could hurt me. I smiled at him so he could see that I was fine.
“We wouldn’t have come back just for that Robeson stuff,” Lily said. “By that time there was nothing in Welford worth coming back for. It wasn’t like the old days. In the old days everyone who wasn’t in the city was here.” Her whole manner had altered to a dream-fed melancholy. “Not just Westin,” she said. “The whole crowd was here, from the Masses, everyone.”
“You knew Westin?”
“Everyone knew him.”
“What was he like?”
“Beautiful.” She sighed. “He was a beautiful boy. He still is. I saw him the last time I was in. He’s got white hair and wrinkles and he’s still a beautiful boy. I told him so and he laughed and he said I was lying but it was absolutely true that I was as gorgeous as ever.” She smiled wistfully. “That isn’t true, though. I’m beautiful for a woman my age but that isn’t the same as being a beautiful twenty- or thirty-year-old. You didn’t know me when I was really beautiful.”
“A remarkable observation,” Vincent said.
“We were so happy here.” Somehow implying that they’d been carried away by force. “We had the best parties, the biggest and the best. We raised more money for the Scottsboro boys than anyone. You were never bored. If nothing was going on up here you looked in the Worker for a What’s-On. They had a whole page of them all the time and you could always go to a What’s-On. Do you know what it’s like never never to be bored?”
A starving orphan describing a magical land where children are never hungry.
“Actually,” Vincent said, “there’s more going on now in terms of the country as a whole. But it’s all the kids.”
“Ohhh . . .” Irritated at this unwelcome, frighteningly true interruption of her reverie. She stood up, yawned again, began fluttering around the room. “When is Josh coining?” Picking up a stone from the bowl of smooth stones I kept on the mantel. People always touched them but when Lily did it I wanted to scream, grab them back, hit her. I never did it, though, except for the one time she came when I was about to be ill. Around the time Mimi got married. Things were beginning to come apart, borders to fuzz, although Mimi hadn’t yet noticed, I suppose she was too busy to notice. I was losing pieces of some of the days and my diary for that week was strangely fragmented—like a puzzle that had been pushed together in spite of the fact that pieces were missing.
“We haven’t heard from him,” Mimi said.
“I wonder why.” Fretful again. “He always comes in the summer.”
Which of course was the only reason she was there.
“He doesn’t always give a lot of notice, though.”
“You never even called me when he came in the spring.”
“He was working. He made us promise not to call a soul.”
“Also,” I said, “he had his girlfriend with him.”
“Oh, Beth,” Mimi said.
“He was very sparkling,” I said. “She seemed to bring out the best in him, she was very intelligent. We had a wonderful time, no one was bored for a minute.”
Silence thicker than milkweed chewing gum.
“I’m tired,” Lily announced abruptly, in that way she had that made people wonder why they hadn’t thought to put a bed under her. “I’m going to take a nap.”
And she headed upstairs, taking it for granted that someone would carry up her bags. Two days later she left to visit friends in Westport with instructions to Mimi that she was to be called as soon as anyone heard from Josh.
• • •
Josh called and told Mimi he and Gilda were in Southampton and would arrive in a couple of weeks. I heard Mimi tell him that Lily was there and then there was a long pause and Mimi said, “It’s not that you have an obligation, Josh, it’s just a question of how Lily feels.” Then another long pause and she said Gilda was welcome, we would all love to see Gilda, but not while Lily was waiting to see Josh. Then a brief pause and she said he was a darling and hung up.
“You told him not to bring her because Lily’s here.”
She nodded. “He said in that case he wouldn’t be here until after Labor Day.”
“We had a lot of fun last time,” I said.
“I know, dear, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I’d have to tell Lily, she’ll be calling to check, I’m sure.”
“You could keep her away if you wanted to,” I said. Knowing Mimi, being Mimi, could not.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” Mimi sighed. “You know I can’t do that.”
“I don’t know anyt
hing of the sort. Tell her there’s someone coming she wouldn’t like. Why should she spoil our fun?”
“She doesn’t spoil my fun,” Mimi said. “Sometimes it’s a little hectic if I’m trying to write but I don’t seem to be writing, anyway. So what difference will it make? I won’t mind having her here at all.”
“Well you should! She only comes here to get pampered. All those years she had Josh waiting on her she never wanted to come back, she only came when he insisted, and now that he’s not pampering her any more she—”
“He never did,” Mimi said. “Not the way you think he did, anyway. You think he was such a perfect husband? You think he didn’t have girlfriends even when they were living together? You never even try to look at it from her point of view, only from his.”
“You’re wrong,” I told her. “I look at it from my own, and that’s why I hate her and I hate having her around. I’m not the way I want to be when she’s here. I’m some rotten hateful little girl that I despise. It’s the same thing Vincent was talking about. When she’s around I hate myself because I’m full of hatred.”
“You upset me when you talk about hating,” Mimi said. “You’re the most gentle person I know, it seems all wrong to hear you say it.”
“You think she comes because she loves you,” I said. “She doesn’t know what love is, she doesn’t love you she only needs you.”
“That isn’t fair! How can you be sure? How can you even be sure they’re two different things?”
“It’s like a convalescent home when she’s here,” I said. Thinking, this is what I meant, Mimi. This is what Lily turns me into. Someone who can stand her and try to make you see the truth about your mother even if you’re the only one the truth will hurt. “She rattles around the country, Hollywood, Chicago, Florida, New York, shopping, having her hair done, going to parties and parties until finally she’s exhausted and she needs a rest or she wants to see Josh. What better place than here? With her slave Mimi? She wakes up and Mimi brings her brunch in bed. She wants to go someplace, Mimi drives her. She’s bored, Mimi and Barney tell her stories and if that doesn’t work, Mimi calls up some people to come over and amuse her. And if all this begins to wear her out Mimi runs her a bath, or picks up some of the trashy magazines she adores, then plumps up the pillows so she can nap, or . . .” I stopped. Not because Mimi was upset, although she was, but because I suddenly thought to myself, Oh, my God, I know what she’s thinking! She’s thinking she does more than that for me and she never gets rid of me, I’m always here. Maybe 1 bother her more than Lily does! And then my head was a blank -except for the words, Mimi hates me, Mimi hates me, over and over.
“What is it, Beth?” Mimi asked. “What happened?”
But I couldn’t speak. Mimi hates me.
“Beth,” she said, “speak to me, Beth, you’re scaring ne.”
She hates me.
“Beth!” She shook me by the shoulders and that broke it. “What is it, Beth?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“How can I not mind?”
“I just . . . I was just thinking you do much more for me than for Lily.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well . . .” I found myself picking my words with great caution for no apparent reason. Like tiptoeing into a room where no one was asleep. “. . . what I mean is, I know that I practically owe you my whole existence.”
“Nonsense!” Dismissing my idea at the split second that she began to understand it.
“It isn’t nonsense, Mimi. You know perfectly well that I couldn’t get along without you.”
“Why should you? I don’t even want you to. But you could if you needed to. People do the things they have to do.”
“You do the things you have to do. I do the things I want to do. It’s not the same thing.”
“Ohhhh . . .”
“I don’t blame you for getting annoyed with me. That’s part of what I’m talking about. I don’t know why you don’t get angry more often.”
Ashamed a little because I was manipulating her. Evoking inevitable responses with guaranteed lines.
“Because I love you, Elizabeth, that’s why. Why should I get angry if I love you and I don’t mind doing things for you?”
No. Mimi hardly ever got angry. Even later—even now—she is a person of great patience and forbearance. But something had changed, something to do with needing patience in the first place. Mimi had never seemed to be controlling her anger and forcing herself to bear with us; the anger seemed not to be there at all. One never had the sense that some final blow could suddenly make her explode. Now the anger was there and simply buried almost all of the time.
• • •
She had waited too long to tell me and then she told me too quickly. It was almost the end of August. She came down to breakfast, made some iced tea, which she’d been drinking all summer instead of coffee, spilled a little on her hand as she set it on the table, said nervously, “Beth, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s crazy but it’s also wonderful and I hope you’ll be pleased because I’m pleased.” Looking as though she hadn’t slept a minute the night before. Speaking in a way that made it clear she’d rehearsed every word. “I’m going to have a baby.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Barney said, raising his mug.
“You’ve been drinking to that since before you knew about it,” she snapped at him, and then she caught her breath and stared at him in a mixture of confusion and pain. She’d never talked to him like that—never in all the time they’d been married, certainly while I’d been around and fairly certainly when they were alone. He teased her or was querulous and she ignored him or responded but never with anger. It frightened her as much as it frightened me.
“God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Barney,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Barney smiled. “What the hell, sport. It’s taken fifteen years for the bitch in you to come out. You’re entitled.” She stood up abruptly and ran from the room. No. Sort of walked heavily, as she’s so small anyway and had already gained weight. I’d noticed the weight and blamed the fact that she’d been eating big breakfasts instead of just having coffee in the morning. I just sat there, not even thinking about the baby, yet, because that would take time, to be able to even be horrified about the baby. Instead I just kept seeing Mimi snap at Barney. Over and over. As though the image were a stone- skipped into a pond.
“So, Elizabeth,” Barney said. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
You’ve been drinking to it since before you knew about it.
“About your baby brother . . . or sister . . . or niece . . . or whatever you want to call it. My own personal assumption is that it’ll be a girl because there’s not another male around with the guts to force his way into this matriarchy.”
“I can’t think about it, yet,” I said. “I can’t even believe it, must less think about it.” I could think about the irises, about cutting them back, except that we were very likely to have another heat spell before the fall.
“Where the hell has the summer gone?” Barney said. “I can’t believe school begins in a couple of weeks.”
“It’s because you’ve been working so hard,” I told him. “I’ve hardly seen you all summer.” Even during our rare quiet times together he’d sometimes abruptly left me to go to his study. Other times he and Vincent became absorbed in talk about Vincent’s book and one evening, when Vincent had called Max and Max had come down to say hello, the three of them had ended up getting so drunk that I’d felt excluded.
“Miss me?” He reached over and smoothed the hair back from my forehead.
“You know I like to be with you,” I said.
“Then say you missed me.”
“When is Mimi going to have the baby?”
“Oh, shit,” Barney said, “how’m I supposed to know . . . March . . . middle, third week of March.”
“How long have you known?”
He shrugged. “We suspected almost a month ago.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“She wanted to wait until she was positive . . . she wasn’t sure how you’d react.” He grinned at me. “Have you decided yet how you’re reacting?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel strange but that’s nothing new. I’ve felt strange all summer. Now . . . my God, if I think about it at all, all I can think about is our lives being turned inside out. Our whole lives being changed. I couldn’t bear that. . . . I hope it doesn’t cry a lot. . . . There’s a house on Main Street, whenever I pass it I hear a baby crying. Once or twice a year I go by and always there’s that baby crying. For years and years . . .”
“Same baby?”
“I suppose not. I guess there’re really a lot of them. I just never thought of it before. It doesn’t matter, it’s all the same in my mind.” I shuddered. “I can’t bear the sound of a baby crying.”
“Poor Elizabeth,” Barney said.
I began to cry. He came to the back of my chair and stroked my head.
“Poor little Elizabeth.”
Mimi came back in and said, “Oh God, Bethie, I didn’t want you to be upset. Why are you crying? Is it the baby? It won’t matter, it’ll be all right. Honestly, Barney, you haven’t been sarcastic, have you?”
At that instant I felt that I could appreciate for the first time why Vincent couldn’t stand Mimi. That is, I could sympathize with his anger at her determination to make him happy. Understand his resentment at her trying to dictate his emotions—even if her intentions toward him were always good.
“Your sister,” Barney said, “doesn’t like to hear babies crying.”
“But it’s not going to be that kind of baby, Beth,” Mimi said quickly. “It’s going to be a very happy baby, I promise you. I mean—I’m not saying she’ll never cry, he’ll never cry, whatever, because all babies cry a little but she won’t cry a lot and when she does start to cry I’ll pick her up right away and then she’ll stop.”
Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid Page 5