Dion shook his head.
“Are your parents divorced?”
“No.” He looked at her, aware she was waiting for more, not sure how much he wanted to reveal. He took a deep breath, took the plunge. “I
don’t know who my father was,” he admitted. He glanced away from her, toward the house, ashamed, embarrassed, though he knew it was something over which he’d had no control.
“But doesn’t—”
“My mom doesn’t know either.”
“Oh.”
She was silent then. He wanted to apologize somehow, to say it was not his fault, to tell her not to blame him for the circumstances of his birth, but he said nothing. He tried to read her face, but he could not tell from her expression if she was disappointed, angry, hurt, sympathetic, whether he was tainted in her eyes or it made no difference to her at all. The silence dragged on, and he felt he had to say something.
“My mom’s a slut,” he said.
He regretted the words instantly. The statement did not really express how he felt, and outside the confines of his brain it sounded much too harsh, much too cruel. He had wanted to disassociate himself from his mother and at the same time show that her values, her lifestyle, were not his own. But he did not like the cold, judgmental tone of his own voice, the thoughtless dismissal implied by his words. And he could tell, that Penelope didn’t like it either.
“You dare to say that about your mother?” she said, turning on him.
He wanted to take it back, wanted to explain what he meant, but he couldn’t. “I don’t know,” he said ineffectually.
“Don’t you have any respect for your parents?”
He was quiet.
“I’m scary,” she $aid, pulling back. “I didn’t mean to jump all over you. I don’t really know the circumstances of your life, but I just don’t think that you should heap everything on your mother. If you’ve had a tough time, then she has too. She’s probably doing the best she can. It’s hard being a single parent, you know? I mean, I don’t blame my mothers for …” Her voice trailed off..
“For what?”
“My father.” She looked away..
Neither of them said anything as they continued walking across the grass. It was Dion who spoke first. “What about your father?”
She did not answer.
“Penelope?” he prodded gently.
“My father,” she said, “was torn apart by wolves.”
Dion was shocked into silence. He looked at her, turned away, not knowing what to say. He took a deep breath, “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Penelope nodded slightly, her voice subdued. “I am too.” She pulled ahead of him. “Let’s just forget about it.”
Dion hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should continue with the conversation or let it drop. She’d said she didn’t want to talk about it, but he sensed that she did. The subject of his father was a sensitive one for him; he knew how he felt when other people asked about it, and he was sure that she probably felt a thousand times worse.
Nevertheless, he hastened forward and caught up with her at the edge of the parking lot. “Do you remember him?” he asked.
Her steps slowed. She stopped walking, turned to face him. “I was a baby when he died. I have pictures of him, and from the way my mothers talk about him, I feel as though I know him. But, no, I don’t remember him.
My father exists only in my mind.” She looked at her watch. “It’s almost five-thirty.”
“Yeah, I’d better go.”
Penelope licked her lips. “Still friends?” she asked.
He nodded. “Still friends.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“You don’t hate me?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not.”
“I don’t hate you either.”
Penelope looked toward the house, met his eyes shyly. “My mother said I
could drive you home alone this time.”
“Good,” Dion said.
He meant it. He had nothing against Penelope’s mother, but the drive home last time had been extremely uncomfortable. Penelope had been in the backseat, right behind him, but he’d still felt as though he was alone in the car with her mom. Her mother had done most of the talking, asked all of the questions, and most of those questions had been strangely personal. Or just plain strange. There had seemed something vaguely sexual about the way she’d smiled at him, something promising or threatening in the way her eyes had examined him. In a bizarre manner she reminded him of his own mom, and that made him extremely uncomfortable. He had quickly revised his initial impression of her. And he had been grateful when the car had pulled up to the curb in front of his house and he had gotten out.
He’d said nothing to Penelope, of course. And this time when he’d seen her mom again, she’d seemed once more a typical, if slightly mousy, housewife.
But he was glad he wouldn’t have to ride in a car with her again.
“I’ll get the keys and tell them we’re going,” Penelope said.
“Okay.”
He followed her up the steps and into the house.
Penelope turned out to be a good driver, a safe and cautious driver. She drove with her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, and she slowed for yellow lights. Dion found himself smiling at her conscientious concentration.
She must have seen him out of the corner of her eye. “What are you grinning at?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you making fun of the way I drive?”
“Of course not.”
She turned on her blinker to make a left turn. “I don’t drive that often, you know.”
He laughed. “I never would’ve guessed.”
She left the engine on as she pulled in front of his house and put the car into Park.
“We didn’t get much studying done,” Dion said, picking up his books from the seat between them.
“No,” she admitted. He looked at her, wanting to touch her, wanting at the very least to shake her hand and say goodbye, but he was afraid to.
“Do you want to come in?” he asked.
“Oh, no!” She shook her head, as if shocked by the offer. “I couldn’t. I
have to be straight back.” She looked embarrassedly down at the steering wheel. “Besides, my mothers wouldn’t like it.”
“Mothers?”
“Huh?”
“Mothers. You said your ‘mothers.’ “
“Did I?”
“Yes. And you said it before too.”
She blushed. “Well, I guess that’s how I think of them. I mean, I know it seems weird, but they all take care of me. The women of the combine share business duties, and they also sort of share family duties too.
It’s …” She shook her head. “No. That’s not exactly true.” She sighed.
“I might as well be honest with you. I’ve never told anyone this before, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know which one’s my mother.”
He stared at her incredulously. “You’re kidding.”
“No. It’s true. I mean, I sort of adopted Felice as my mother because I
liked her the best, and for school and things I need to have one mother.
But to me they’re all my mothers, and I don’t know which is the real one.”
“Have you asked?”
She shrugged. “Indirectly. But it’s sort of an awkward subject. It’s probably the way most people feel when they try to talk about sex with their parents. It’s tough.” She looked at him. “I didn’t really even care until recently. It probably sounds strange to you, but I was brought up this way. I’ve never known anything else. So to me it seems natural.”
“Natural?”
She smiled. “Almost natural.”
“But why? It’s just so .. weird.”
She shrugged. “My mothers believe that I will turn out to be a healthier and more well-rounded person if I am not subjected to the family pressures that everyone else experiences. If I’m not
forced to play a traditional role within our household, I will not be locked into playing a traditional role in society.” She smiled sadly. “I guess I’m sort of an experiment.”
Dion shook his head.
“A failed experiment.”
“I don’t think so. I think you turned out very well. And surprisingly normal.”
She laughed. “Normal, huh? You know that you’re probably the only person who would call me that.”
“That’s because other people don’t know you as well as I do.”
She reddened, looked away, and impulsively he reached over and touched the back of her hand resting on the seat. Her gaze jerked immediately up, her eyes locking on his. They stared at each other for a moment. Her skin felt smooth, soft, cool beneath his fingers. She pulled her hand out from under his.
“I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” she said, putting the car into gear.
“But—”
“I have to go.”
“Still have those same old parental restrictions, don’t you?”
Penelope laughed.
He got out of the car, closed the door. “Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye. I’ll see you in school.”
She waved as she turned around, and he watched the car cruise smoothly down the block until it disappeared with a blink of red taillight around the corner.
April sat in front of the television, waiting for Dion to re: turn.
The TV was on, but she was not paying attention. She was thinking about her son, about the way he was growing older, growing up. She saw him in her mind as a child, then thought of him going out with a high school girl, holding the girl’s hand, kissing her. It was an uncomfortable thought, and one she did not like. She knew it was normal and natural and that it was long past time that Dion showed some interest in the opposite sex, but she still didn’t feel good about it.
She was angry at herself for thinking this way. She had always promised herself that she would not be an overprotective mother. So far it had not been a promise that was hard for her to keep. If anything, she had been underprotective, leaving him too much to his own devices. But then Dion had never needed much supervision. He was not the kind of kid to hang out with the wrong kinds of friends, or party or drink or use drugs.
The things she had done.
Now, though, she worried. It was not that she didn’t trust her son. It was more mat … Well, she hated to admit it, but she was jealous. She knew what Margaret would say if she told her about it. She knew all of them would laugh at her, would tell her it was time to let go, time to stop coddling her son, but she couldn’t help wanting him not to change, wanting him to remain forever exactly the way he was now. There was nothing sexual about her jealousy. It was nothing like that. It was just that, for all of his brains, for all of his intelligence and sophistication, for all of the things he’d been exposed to, there was still something essentially naive and innocent about him, something that she alone knew about, that he shared only with her. She didn’t want that to change. She didn’t want that to disappear.
A commercial came on the television, a commercial for a nationally known brand of wine made here in the Napa Valley. Her eyes focused on the glass of chilled white wine shown sweating on a redwood table before a barbecue.
A glass of wine sounded good right now. It sounded very good. She needed to relax a little, to stop brooding over this situation. What was it Margaret had said about the medicinal value of good wine? She stood up and was about to walk into the kitchen when an unwanted memory of the other night burst upon her. She sat shakily down.
Not all wine was good.
She heard Dion’s knock on the front door, heard his machine-gun ringing of the doorbell. She hadn’t heard a car pull up, hadn’t seen it through the window. She’d been too preoccupied. She stood up again. “Coming!”
she called. She opened the door.
Dion rushed in. His color was high, and he was obviously excited.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, putting his books down on the seat of the hall tree. “I’m starved.”
April smiled. “That sounds suspicious to me. Why are you so hungry? What were you doing?”
He looked at her. “Huh?”
“Come on,” she teased. “What’s her name?”
He reddened. “Mom …”
“Don’t ‘mom’ me. This is exactly the sort of thing we should be talking about. We’re supposed to be communicating, remember? We’re supposed to be sharing our thoughts and feelings, et cetra, et cetra.”
Dion smiled.
“I’m serious.” She moved back to the couch, sat down, patted the seat next to her. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
“Look, I have to study.”
“I thought you wanted to eat.”
“‘I have to study until it’s time to eat.”
“You’re going to talk first. Did you have a good time?”
“Mom …”
“If you ever want to leave this house again, you’d better humor me.
After all, I’m your mother. I have a right to know. What’s her name?”
Dion sat down next to her. “I told you her name last time. Penelope.”
“Penelope what? You never told me her last name.”
“Daneam. Penelope Daneam.”
She frowned. “Daneam? Like Daneam Vineyards?”
“Yeah. You’ve heard of it?”
She felt a small knot of worry in her stomach. “Is this, uh, serious?
Are you two seeing each other, going steady, boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever you call it these days?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What’s she like?”
“She’s nice.”
“Is she good-looking?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty, sort of pretty or very pretty?”
“Mom!”
She smiled at him. “Okay, okay. I’m just trying to find out where things stand. Are you going to be going out with her? On a real date?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I don’t even know if she likes me.”
“But you’re attracted to her, right?”
He stood up. “I have to study.”
“Sit down.” She grabbed his belt buckle, pulling him back onto the couch. “You know, you’re lucky,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because. This is a good time for you, even though you might not realize it. It’s frustrating, I know. You can’t think, can’t concentrate on your homework, you spend half your time wondering what the other person is doing, whether they like you or are thinking about you. But it’s exciting. You interpret everything as a sign. You analyze every move they make, everything they say, for clues to how they feel about you.”
She smiled sadly at him. “Once they’re caught, once you have them, you lose that. The magnifying glass is gone. You no longer pay so much attention to the little things they do, you start paying more attention to the text of their words than the subtext.” She patted his hand. “I don’t mean to say it’s not good. It is good. But … it’s never the same.”
Dion stared at her. He had never heard his mom talk that way before, and for the first time he felt as though he partially understood the way she acted. He felt even guiltier for the name he had earlier called her, and he realized that he hadn’t told Penelope that he loved his mom. He should have, he thought. He should have told her that.
“I’m hungry too,” April said, changing the subject. She stood up, turned on the table lamp to dispel the creeping shadows in the room. “Let’s eat.”
“What are we having?”
“Tacos.”
“All right.”
“I’ll cook the meat and chop the vegetables. You go to the store and get the tortillas.”
He groaned. “I’m tired. I have to study. I don’t want to go-”
“Or we have egg sandwiches.”
He sighed, conceding defeat. “Give me the keys and some cash.”
&nb
sp; “I thought you’d see it my way.” She grabbed her purse from the table and took out her keys and wallet. She handed him two dollars. “That should be enough.”
He walked outside to the car in the driveway.
She watched him get into the car and back up onto the street, feeling worried, apprehensive, and a little bit scared.
Penelope Daneam.
Somehow she wasn’t surprised.
And that was the part that scared her.
Dinner that night was more silent than usual, the occasional conversation more stilted, more reserved, and Penelope could feel a Big Discussion coming on. She sat at her usual place between Mother Felice and Mother Sheila at the long dining room table, trying to eat her spaghetti without slurping, not wanting to disturb the quiet. Her palms were sweaty, her muscles tense, and she waited for that first innocent lead-in question that would broach the topic on everyone’s mind.
Dion.
None of her mothers had said anything to her about Dion the first time he’d come over. At least not anything serious or substantial. They’d alluded to him playfully, indirectly, letting her know that they were glad she was finally showing some interest in boys, and she’d found during the succeeding days that she felt a lot less reticent in talking about school, a lot less defensive in regard to her social life. If he had been nothing else, he had served as a validation of her normalcy, tangible proof that, despite her own and her mothers’ worst fears, she was not a complete social misfit.
But of course he was something more than that, and she knew that that was what her mothers now wanted to talk to her about.
She looked from Mother Margeaux chewing her food thoughtfully at the head of the table, to Mother Margaret, across from her. She wished her mothers would just come out and say whaj was on their minds instead of putting so much weight and pressure on everything, turning every minor concern into a major topic of discussion.
But this was their way. Just as the rigidity of the dining arrangements was their way, although to Penelope, her mothers’
insistence of formal dinners every evening had always been something which rang false. Even as a small child, it had always seemed to her that her mothers were feigning civility and sophistication for an audience that was not there, mimicking scenes they had seen in movies or on television. She would never admit it to anyone, but more than once, surrounded by her mothers, eating elaborately prepared meals off expensive imported china, she had been reminded of monkeys dressed in business suits, going through motions they did not understand. It was a harsh assessment and not entirely fair, but the analogy did not seem to her that far off base. There was something wild beneath the calm exterior of her mothers, a sense of something untamed struggling to get out of a package of politeness. Mother Margeaux in particular always seemed so controlled, so unemotional, but Penelope knew from experience that her outward display of rationality was just that: a display. When Mother Margeaux was angry or she drank too much, when she let herself go, the results were truly frightening.
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