We Never Told

by Diana Altman

  “I have to go to court to change my name back to my name?”

  “It’s not a complicated procedure. I can give you the address of the court house.”

  “What law says my name changes automatically upon marriage?”

  He opened a thick book and showed me the law cases that he thought proved my name had automatically changed. I copied the names of the cases and went to the law library at the State House in Boston to see what the cases were about. I thought it was wonderful that the law library was public, that I didn’t have to be enrolled at law school to find out what I needed to know. It was a large room with bookshelves floor to ceiling, a room that seemed to have been there since the Revolution. The librarian found the books I needed. I read the cases the commissioner had sited. They were entirely irrelevant. One was the case of a woman who crashed a car with expired registration and the other was about some woman who got on the wrong bus.

  The night before I returned to City Hall to register, I was up all night worrying. I would blast in there, stamp my foot, and tell them if they wanted to disenfranchise me I’d sue them. The same matronly woman came to the counter and smiled. “Hello, dear,” she said. “Back again?”

  “Yes. I want to register to vote.”

  “Yes, dear. Of course.” Why did she have to be so nice? She was a peacemaker incarnate, everyone’s favorite grandma! She held her pen poised above the registration form. “What street do you live on, dear?”

  “Cresnut.”

  “Cresnut?”

  “No! Chestnut.”

  “Chestnut?”

  “No! No!” I couldn’t remember my street! I stood there with my mouth open. Where did I live? There was only static in my head.

  “Take your time, dear.”

  “I can’t remember my own street!”

  “Perhaps you’d like to come back tomorrow. We’re here every day.”

  “No. No. Wait. It’s near the Pike. Do you have a list? Do you have a list of all the streets?” Another person came into the office, the woman excused herself, helped that other person by getting some forms and giving them to him. As he was departing I blurted out, “Crescent! Crescent Street!”

  She held her pen over the forms. “Tell me your name again, dear.”

  “Sonya Adler.”

  She filled that in. “And your husband’s first name?”

  “Leo.” She filled in Leo Adler. “No. It’s Leo Cohen.”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes. Now I remember. You want to register in your maiden name. I can’t do that, dear. It’s against the law.”

  “So you mean Newton is going to disenfranchise me?”

  “No, no. Heavens sakes no.”

  “But I’m not going to register using my husband’s name.” She nodded to me, excused herself, and went into the commissioner’s office. When she came out, she gestured for me to go in.

  “Sonya,” he said. “I see you’re a very determined young lady.”

  “The cases have nothing to do with me,” I said. “I’m going to sue the city if you don’t let me vote in my own name.”

  “Sue the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever sued a city before?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how to sue the city?”

  “No. But I can find out.”

  “So, you’re going to do battle with the city of Newton? That’s a rather lengthy procedure, Sonya.”

  “So let’s just agree to let me register in my own name. Will save both of us a lot of trouble.”

  “I would do that if I could. I’m going to refer this to the City Solicitor, Sonya. We’ll see what he says. How’s that?”

  “Main thing is to make sure he figures it out before the election because I want to vote for George McGovern. I don’t want Richard Nixon to be president again. Okay?”

  About two weeks later, the voting commissioner phoned me. He said that the City Solicitor enjoyed researching this case and had come to the conclusion that if we went to court Newton would lose. The city had no compelling reason to make me use my husband’s surname. If I wanted to register to vote in my maiden name, I was free to do so.

  If I could vote without going to probate court to change my name back to my name, then every married woman in the state could do the same thing. It was just a matter of alerting them and telling them to simply refuse to go to probate court. I wrote an article for the Boston Phoenix describing my argument with Newton. While I was impatient with the women who just did what they were told by their local election officials, absurdly trotted off to court to plead to keep their own names, I also wanted to help them. There was no reason for them to listen to me. Obviously they were women who respected authority. If there was an organization that told them what to do, they might listen. So at the bottom of the Phoenix article I wrote that any woman who needed advice about this issue should call Name Change. “What?” Leo said. “That’s my telephone number too!”

  I was so much in the grip of a cause that I hadn’t even considered that Leo might be bothered by strangers calling our home. Leo now had a job with an architecture firm that built hyperbolic paraboloid structures, cavernous spaces used by universities for indoor stadiums. He went off to work each morning and came home for dinner with the latest alert about the boss, who was having an affair with the secretary, and how the other men at their drawing boards said each secretary lasted about six months. This one’s time was up and a parade of applicants came out of the boss’s office, and Leo’s colleagues did secret thumbs up or down depending on if they thought she was pretty and vulnerable enough to get the job. My daycare center closed because of lack of funding and the Boston Phoenix suggested that I work freelance for them, so I was home much of the day doing research or writing. Dozens of women called asking what to do in order to keep their maiden names. It was as if the idea of maiden names was a cloud that was hanging over all of us, and we just happened to look up and see it, all at the same time. “Just don’t go to probate court,” I said to all of them. “Your name is whatever you say it is so long as you have no intention to defraud anyone.” The callers thought they were listening to an expert because they’d called an organization. Then lawyers began to call and ask my advice. Then people who worked at the State House, and soon we realized this was a movement of some sort and it was happening in every state. Married woman all across the country were demanding to use their maiden names. I wrote about this for Ms. Magazine. Then my phone really began to ring. The callers had no idea that the person on the other end had morning sickness.

  Now I understood that what made me female wasn’t only those exciting parts on the outside but the hidden treasure inside. True, every month blood came out to remind me that things were going on in there but this was different. This was the first time I felt it all to be connected. The outside paraphernalia was simply the flappy odiferous door to the inside. It was the inside that really mattered. As my clothes got smaller and even Leo’s sweat pants got tight, I felt perfectly self-contained. Nothing mattered or even really existed except me as vessel of magic happenings. I became everyone’s darling. Strangers spoke to me tenderly. Everyone loved me! I was apart from the swirl and swarm of the world. I was in a spiritual category that strangers thought holy. In department stores, I came down to earth with a thud. The maternity clothes were hidden way in the back on the top floor, all of them designed to hide my belly as if it was shameful. They were leftovers from the days when the word pregnant was too fraught and people whispered, “She’s with child.” Most of the sleeves were puffy such as a little girl might wear. They were insulting clothes and I tried to avoid them by wearing caftans.

  While the baby kicked, I listened on the phone to a woman in Tennessee who asked how to go back to her maiden name now that she’d used her husband’s name for years. His last name was Bug and she wanted to return to Anderson. She was tired of being Mrs. Bug. She said the judge at probate court said she had to get permission from her son who was twelve. I said I�
��d do some research and get back to her. I went back to the article I was writing for the Phoenix. The phone rang. “Name Change,” I said.

  “Sonya. Listen. Our mother’s had an accident. Some moron in the subway shot a slingshot into the crowd on the platform and hit her in the eye.”

  “What?”

  “They took her to the emergency room.”

  “What? Is she blind?”

  “No. They don’t really know. The hospital called me, said I should bring some fresh clothes for her. I said I didn’t have a key to her apartment. The woman says you are the daughter aren’t you, like it’s abnormal not to have a key to your mother’s apartment.”

  “What? Is she okay?”

  “She has a big patch on her eye.”

  “Is she at the hospital?”

  “No. She’s home. They released her.”

  “Why did they want you to go in her apartment?”

  “Her clothes were all bloody. So I ended up going to the Towne Shoppe on Broadway to buy her a housecoat. Then I had to agonize about whether she’d be hurt because I bought a large. But lucky I did. They’re making things so small nowadays. Have you noticed that?” I heard Joan inhale then say in a choked voice, “This stuff is great. No seeds.” She exhaled. “So you know what she said when she saw me? She says, ‘What are you doing here?’ You should have seen her. First of all, those emergency rooms are the most disgusting places on earth. Took the moron at the desk forever to find out where our mother was and to get me permission to see her. Meanwhile you’re waiting with a room full of bleeding people and crying children, and somebody who’s been shot comes in on a stretcher with cops all around. Then I go back and there she is in one of those rooms, which is really just a space closed off with a curtain and not everyone closes their curtain so you see all these people in beds all hooked up to tubes.” Joan sucked smoke. “I’m telling you I almost threw up.” She exhaled. “Mother was lying in one of the beds with the curtains pulled all around, and she was really surprised to see me. She had this bandage all around the top of her head. She had on one of those hospital smock things. She said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said they called me. She said, ‘Why?’ I said because you had an accident. They said someone shot you in the eye with a slingshot. She says, ‘But why did they call you?’ I said because I’m your daughter. She said, ‘I know you’re my daughter but why did they call you?’”

  “Gosh.”

  “Exactly. Gosh. I felt like saying who the fuck else are they going to call? Anyway they patched her up and sent her home.”

  “Does she need someone to stay with her?”

  “They send a visiting nurse.”

  “Did they catch the guy?”

  “No. He was on the subway and it just pulled out and away he went and there was our mother on the platform bleeding all over the place.”

  “Oh, my god. Who helped her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She wouldn’t say?”

  “She said she didn’t know. I think she was probably in shock.”

  “She’s home now?”

  “Yes. I’ll go over there tomorrow and bring her some food and things. Not to mention what I had to do to get Raf to come over and stay with the kids.”

  “Thanks, Joan.”

  “He’s getting married. To Latest Girl.”

  “Good luck to her. Is she pregnant?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Does she like Josh and Jenny?”

  “She likes Josh but she treats Jenny like shit. Told her she has chunky thighs. Can you imagine? She tells a six-year-old she has chunky thighs! She’s a big believer in manners. So Josh comes home last weekend and holds my chair for me at the table. It was so cute. You should see how they sit up and hold their forks and everything. She’s really teaching them that crap. It’s great.”

  “Has she ever been married before?”

  “Are you kidding? She’s like two years old.”

  “Did you ever see her?”

  “Yes. Blond.”

  “Pretty?”

  “In that boring way. Everything’s where it’s supposed to be but nothing exudes.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  Her silence was articulate. I’d pressed on a bruise and regretted it. Her husband had abandoned her, saw their two children only every other weekend, and even then, he sometimes had better things to do. So she had no cause to be jealous. He wasn’t worth her love. Why should she care about a jerk? But she did care about him, couldn’t hide the spark in her eyes when he entered the room. “Are you kidding?” Joan said, recovering her mask. “I feel sorry for her. She’s about to find out she’s married to the biggest dope on the face of the earth. You should see him. He’s transformed. His hair’s really short, and he wears leisure suits. Remember those socks Grandpa used to wear?”

  “The silk ones?”

  “With all those hideous designs on them?”

  “Raf wears silk socks?”

  “Yes. He’s wearing silk socks.”

  It was tempting to tell her about Wiley. That seemed a proper punishment to tell his other favorite cousin. But I couldn’t. “Do you want me to come down there to help with our mother?”

  “You don’t need to.”

  Violet’s reaction when I phoned her in Mount Vernon was belligerent. “Who told you?” She said this with a lot of feeling as if she’d been betrayed.

  “Joan.”

  “Well, it’s nothing. It’s absolutely nothing.”

  “Joan said you got hit in the eye.”

  “There’s no reason to make a big fuss about it.”

  “I’m not making a fuss. I’m just calling you up.”

  “You have that tone in your voice.”

  “What tone?”

  “That pity tone, like poor Stupid got herself into another fix.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you. How could I blame you? You were just standing there.”

  “Some black kid.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes I saw him. You know how they never move to the back of the subway car but always just stand in the door, blocking everyone getting on and off? He was in the doorway and as everyone was shoving past him our eyes met and he shot me. Looked right at me.”

  “You were still on the platform?”

  “Yes.”

  “That, Mother, was not a good day.”

  “No. It was not.”

  “Are you going to be blind in that eye?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Is your other eye okay?”

  “Yes. I can see out of the other eye.” The baby inside of me moved its little foot or its little elbow, and I put my palm on my belly to feel it better. It was reassuring to feel its activity. My mother said, “I want to move out of the city. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like me to come visit and we can talk about it?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Mother, listen. I’m going to get in my car tomorrow, and I’ll be at your place by late afternoon.”

  “No, no. You can’t travel.”

  “Actually, I feel great. Energetic, healthy.”

  I heard her sigh. “I just hate it here, Sonya. I don’t know what to do. The people next door play that horrible rock and roll all the time. They leave their dog howling while they’re at work. It cries like a baby. But there’s some good news. I’m a finalist in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.”

  “But isn’t everyone a finalist?” Silence. “Mother. Those things are fake.”

  “Some of them are fake. But this one isn’t. I’ve been selected.”

  “For what?”

  “As a finalist.” Had she become dotty living alone so long? Was the sting of being poor getting to be too much for her? What had become of haughty Violet Greenstone? “Maybe you can drive down, and we can w
atch the sweepstakes drawing on television.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The warehouse that Grandpa Greenstone left to Alan and Violet sold for a million dollars. Alan, as trustee, doled out Violet’s half in what he probably thought was a responsible way. He required that she itemize her expenses: rent, transportation, telephone, insurance. Then she had to endure his questioning her; was that really the least expensive insurance on the market? Couldn’t she renegotiate her apartment lease? Was her telephone service really the most economical? If she needed more money, she had to beg him, like the time she wanted to buy a new television. She had to detail everything that was wrong with her current television and send invoices from the repair man to prove she’d tried to fix it.

  All his life, Alan had been doing what his father asked and when he looked around he was pleased with the results. He admired his father’s judgment. If Max Greenstone thought Alan’s sister incapable of handling her own affairs, then she was.

  I drove to New York, the car seat pushed way back from the steering wheel to accommodate my belly, which made touching the pedals more difficult. I cursed the stick shift, banged into myself every time I changed gears. I cursed the seat belt that was stretched as long as it would go but still felt too tight. My breasts had become wonderfully gigantic.

  It saddened me to enter the lobby of my mother’s building. It was so beneath her, the ragged rubber plant with cigarette burn holes in its leaves, the useless front desk where there was never a doorman. She opened her apartment door. The whole side of her face was black and blue. She had a patch over her right eye, a raised cup made of some beige fabric. It was so seriously surgical that it made whatever was hidden underneath seem ghastly. My stomach flipped over. Her other eye was so bloodshot the white was red. “Mother!” I said. “Oh, my goodness.”

  “I must look hideous,” she said turning away from me. “Don’t look at me.”

  “No you don’t. No you don’t.”

  “Well, this too shall pass.”