Beyond Deserving

by Sandra Scofield

  Katie isn’t much of a reader, but she has burrowed her way through a good many pages of Maureen’s books. What she understands from them is this: Your parents acted out a design of living that was probably made up of their reactions to their parents, and so on. In this manner you learned how men and women get along. Then, too, each parent had a trip to play on you, and all of that taught you how to act with people when you grew up. Your mind got stamped, like visas on a passport to unhappy states. On the one hand, no matter what you thought of your childhood, you looked for ways to bring it into your adult life. You opened presents on Christmas eve, if that’s how it was done in your family, and if this conflicted with your lover’s ideas about Christmas, you fought it out until somebody gave up. You looked for lovers who could be what you had not been, strong where you were weak, yin for your yang, or was it the other way around?

  The notion intrigues Katie. She has spent a lot of time trying to think what it means for her. Truthfully, she can’t remember much about her family. Her father was from Mississippi, and his parents had already died before Katie was born. Her mother’s parents lived on the other side of Texas, and she hardly ever saw them. And Katie’s own parents seem vague, like people viewed through a mist.

  She grew up in a house where no one had much to say, except for her mother telling her what to do. Her father, when he spoke, said things he might have said to anybody’s child. Pass the potatoes. Here’s the funnies. Pull the shade down, change the channel. He didn’t notice when she cut her hair and outgrew her dresses. When she broke her arm he didn’t notice the cast until it was pointed out to him, and then he only said, “Did it hurt?” and he turned away before she could tell him what a surprise it had been.

  What Katie has figured out now, amateur that she is, is that her father was remote to her mother, too. He was an inaccessible man. It may be true that Katie married a man who isn’t always there, but Katie has never attempted the kinds of accommodations her mother made for her father. She has not tried to pretend she and Fish are an ordinary couple. She wonders about her father, wonders if he was a drunk who stayed away on binges, or went to bars on the way home. She remembers that he slept on the couch frequently, and she knows he was late very often, but she cannot remember anything that suggests alcohol. She always assumed her father worked hard. She always thought it was because he was trying to please her mother.

  Maureen is not willing to let go of the possibilities in this analysis, though. They have a lot of free time, and talking about childhood fills some of it up. Katie lounges in Maureen’s apartment, which has better furnishings, left by a prior tenant. While they play old Donahue programs on tape, and are sometimes distracted into discussions about the problems Donahue has packaged for them, they tell one another their stories. Maureen’s are richer tales. She says she has worked on the details. She is disappointed that Katie hits so many blank walls, but Katie’s “amnesia” excites her, too, because, she says, when Katie probes a little deeper, and the walls come tumbling down, oh boy, watch out, Katie will break out, feel the pain, and break free.

  All of this supposition is based on Maureen’s premise that talk heals. Maureen says at first it doesn’t even matter if anybody tells you anything in return, if they’ll only listen. Later, though, you need a sponsor, and later than that, maybe a therapist, or a spiritual mentor.

  Maureen used to be in Alcoholics Anonymous. She still goes to Al-Anon, because she keeps falling in love with guys who stay high, and because she worries too much. Lately she has also been going to a group for children of dysfunctional families, run along the same AA lines of twelve steps, anonymity, and sponsorship. Her mother was a drunk, and Maureen has learned how many ways her mother’s dysfunction affects her, even now. Maureen has a sponsor in each group, and is a sponsor to several people, but she can’t afford a therapist. She says this means it isn’t time yet. Once or twice a year she goes to a workshop to help her growth. Her last one was about personal mythology; she learned new insights into her tremendous sense of being doomed. The workshop before that one was a Celtic ritual. Everything feeds your transformation, she says. Her favorite step is number twelve, a spiritual enlightenment. She says next she is going to read Hildegard of Bingen.

  Maureen tends to use a lot of catchy phrases and words from the books she reads, and Katie thinks maybe Maureen takes a little too much for granted about what Katie is able to absorb. Katie wonders if, when Maureen says “Talk heals,” she isn’t really talking shorthand for a more substantive process Maureen hasn’t quite got a finger on, or can’t quite describe. Or it may be that there is a formula for transforming yourself that doesn’t translate outside of twelve-step groups. It’s like, Coke isn’t Pepsi.

  Maureen says, “Anybody as strained in her relationship with her mother as you are has something she hasn’t worked out. Including a lot of anger, I bet.” She hastens to add that you cannot change the past. You have to change yourself. Katie protests that her mother isn’t especially important to her anymore, that her mother has no power over her. She knows how weak that sounds when you consider that her mother is raising Katie’s daughter. This is a shocking thought: that Rhea is being shaped by a woman with whom Katie cannot bear to spend five minutes.

  Still, when Katie gives the matter a little more thought, she finds it intriguing to attempt to create a structure for her past, one that includes Fish, and, yes, Rhea, too. She can see there are a lot of variables to consider. The past seems to be a giant homework assignment, almost as bad as trig and chemistry.

  Katie went to a meeting with Maureen once. It was the group about having horrible parents. She was stunned by the emotionalism. She cannot imagine herself speaking up like that, telling old childhood hurts and present pains. Why would anybody want to know? And how would she ever find words? If she talked about her mother, June would probably sound prudent and generous. It is Katie who would sound petty and stupid.

  Furthermore, she was embarrassed by the buckets of tears shed, the storm of howls, the displays of anger, and resentment, and self-pity. She was left shaken. “Yeah,” some of the others said when someone finished. They said, “We hear you,” and “Thank you for sharing.”

  The group seemed to be for people who have not worked out their adulthood and need the past to blame. The experience left Katie feeling defensive; she didn’t think she belonged with such a group. She pointed out to Maureen that if she wants therapeutic talk, she has a sister-in-law in social work. Maureen cried, “And what good does that do you! You can’t let it hang out in your husband’s brother’s kitchen. Those people are all invested in the same family lies!” As Maureen was talking, a grossly fat woman on Donahue started telling about being asked to leave a restaurant because she was offending other diners. The woman began to quiver as she talked; her arms and jowls shook, and then she sobbed, moving all over, like a huge caught tuna. Donahue asked if she was okay, he asked her how she was doing. She blubbered, “I’m hungry.”

  Katie and Maureen looked at one another in horror, and then burst out laughing. It felt better between them. Maureen said maybe Katie should come to Al-Anon. “It’s a quieter group. They focus on the present, and on positive steps a person can take. They don’t dwell on the hurts.” Katie could only lift her shoulders slightly. She didn’t know anything else to say. Maureen insisted, “First you start to talk. Then you start working the steps. Then you start to heal. You’ll see, Katie. The things that trouble you don’t belong to you like a treasure. Other people have been where you are, and moved on.”

  Maybe that was what Katie didn’t like, the way Maureen and her groups threatened Katie’s sense of uniqueness. She really doesn’t see how strangers could understand. She doesn’t think even Ursula understands. And she doesn’t feel sick, she feels confused. The impulse for the divorce has become faint, and old, and wavering. There was a moment, clearly, when it seemed the right thing to do. She can no longer put her finger on that moment. She is no longer so sure.

  Mauree
n says that Katie has her feelings all locked up, which, Katie understands, is another way of saying, “You’re kidding yourself.” Katie doesn’t answer, but she actually has a good idea what Maureen means. She has a good idea what could happen if she let go.

  24

  Because Jeff is out of town, and Friday night is lonely, because there are no good movies in town, and she isn’t hungry enough to go out and eat alone, because Maureen is going to Al-Anon and doesn’t make a speech to Katie about it, Katie decides to go, too.

  She is surprised at the turnout on a Friday night. Most of the people in the group are married. All of them are women. In a little while Katie realizes Friday night is probably not very different from other nights of the week for them. Maureen finds a seat across the room, and Katie sits near the door. She does not sense the tension of the group, the electricity that threatens to burst with sparks of pain. There is a young woman, probably not yet twenty, and an elderly woman with a cap of lovely white hair, and Katie and Maureen; the other women look like housewives (if there is such a look, which Katie still assumes there is).

  Taking turns, the participants calmly read the principles of the group, the twelve steps, and then several homilies or “thoughts for the day.” The special topic of the night, chosen by this week’s leader, is “One day at a time,” which, it turns out, is the general slogan of Al-Anon. The readings are all variations on the basic idea that worry doesn’t do any good, that you really ought to focus on getting through the day in a way that’s best for you, that you shouldn’t let other people get your goat and so on. The simplicity of the passages makes Katie uneasy. She finds them just slightly less challenging than the slim paperbacks Maureen has been lending her.

  As she listens to someone reading, she tunes out and starts making up silly little sayings of her own. She thinks, for example, “No one eats an apple whole.” She catches herself smiling. You can say anything about anything, she thinks, and if you say it in little short sentences, strung together on a page or less, with a quotation at the bottom, you will have suggested something profound, especially if the quote is from The Prophet.

  One woman does weep. She says she has moved here lately and has delayed joining the meetings because she is so caught up in worrying about her new job, getting her apartment in order, wondering about her grown daughter who lives in Portland. Somewhere in there she begins to cry. Katie likes the way the other woman speak up encouragingly. “You should have come sooner,” one tells her, “but it doesn’t matter, because you are here now.” They say, “We know how you feel.”

  Katie has a strong urge to speak up. She considers telling them what is going on in her life, in order to see if they say, “We know just how you feel.” That would be funny, since she doesn’t know! She has begun a process that changes everything.

  There is a woman in the group who works for the theatre, too. It isn’t until the end of the meeting that Katie remembers what the woman does; she is a hostess in the members’ lounge, a very pretty woman with delicate hands. She smiles at Katie, but Katie thinks since anonymity is a principle of the group, it would not be okay to speak to her afterwards. The woman’s name is Joyce. She says she has had a hard time because she wants to take care of things right away. She hates having her life in suspension. She says, “My alcoholic is thinking of moving away. He thinks his problems have to do with a lack of meaningful work, and that he can’t do any better in a small county. I want to rush right out and find him a job, or, failing that, get myself a better one!” She smiles ruefully. “The only thing that saves me is reading my literature. I wrote something down yesterday that I especially liked—” She digs in her shirt pocket and brings out a crumpled piece of note paper. “‘There is nothing I have to do. There is only someone to be.’” She bobs her head, as if the line she read tipped her off-balance a very little bit and she is settling again. “Thanks,” she says, and the others say, “Thanks, Joyce.”

  Although she knows it is silly, when the spiral notebook makes its way to Katie, she writes her own name down, and copies Joyce’s name and phone number onto the back of a brochure she puts in her purse. She studies the name a moment, thinking something in the way it is written will help explain who Joyce really is, but all Katie sees is a round pretty hand, the kind high school girls often work to develop, with circles for dots above the i’s, and fat capitals. The J is perfectly symmetrical above and below the line. It looks like a bow lying sideways.

  At the end, they all stand in a circle, holding hands. “Keep coming back!” they all say cheerfully. “It works.”

  She has the distinct impression that Joyce is looking straight at her. Maureen is watching Joyce. The women who are holding Katie’s hands squeeze extra tightly before letting go. Although Katie does not think these women could ever understand her tie to Fish, or the complications of letting go, still she senses that the community of the group is a lot like a safety net under a high-wire walker.

  Maureen says something to her as they walk out. Katie looks at her, not really hearing what she says. Not knowing what to say. She is thinking how it scares her, thinking of how she will feel when she falls.

  25

  Geneva is standing near one of the long draped tables in the River Cove Grange Hall. Her back is to the punch bowl and, large as she is, it looks as if a loss of balance might make her bring the whole thing down. She is talking to River Cove’s librarian, Mary Courter, whom Geneva counts as a close friend, since Mary always calls her first when a new book comes in she thinks Geneva would like. Geneva is wearing a new outfit, all bought by mail from Penney’s and Spiegels’ catalogues. She wears sky blue polyester stretch pants and a blouse of gray sheer georgette with a rounded collar and peplum waist. She wears beige felt bedroom slippers slit at the sides to ease the pressure on her bunions, corns, and hammertoes. Her fresh permanent has taken well, and with her hair short and tight and up off her face, you can see how smooth and clear her skin really is. She is by no means a fat woman, only a big one, taller than anyone in the family, her generation or the next, with broad shoulders and hips and long legs that are a little bony below the knees. Good as she looks, she is hot. Polyester holds its shape but it doesn’t breathe.

  “I guess you can’t blame the caterer,” Geneva says wryly. She and Mary are both a little shaken by the appearance and rapid disappearance of the hors d’oeuvres. They did not take a bite before the food was whisked away. “It’s not her fault the weather went hot when nobody expected it this early in May.” Mary Courter shakes the silvery mound of her curls in agreement, and the two women talk on of hot spells they remember, and wet Junes, of sweet false springs that sometimes come in an Oregon February.

  The punch, concocted of 7-Up, ginger ale, and two shades of sherbet, was set out too soon, before the food, and the sherbet has melted to froth, and then settled into scum. Iced tea or lemonade would have hit the spot, but Geneva left all the arrangements to Ursula, who wanted to be festive.

  Ursula, standing at the other end of the table like half a pair of bookends, is nervously working the tablecloth between her fingers. She gave up smoking eight years ago, but sometimes she has to find something to do with her hands. She has pulled off many a button, picking at threads. Her coworkers tease her and say that one day she will stand up after a day of nerve-wracking court proceedings, and her clothes will fall right off her, every thread pulled free.

  Ursula paid twelve dollars to rent the heavy white tablecloth, and another thirty-five dollars for the two uninspiring bouquets that adorn the center of the table. The net effect depresses her. She decides it is the damask cloth, so out of place in the Grange Hall. She would have done far better with a length of bright paper.

  She glances around the room, wondering if this is the acme of the party, so soon. If so, they are in trouble. There is nothing to do but talk until the food is ready, and most of these people see one another every day as it is.

  She no more than set down two trays of food than she saw that they w
ould lose their center of gravity in this heat. She took them right back to the kitchen cooler, where the cake is stored. The cake is a pretty thing, a sheet piled high with lardy frosting and emblazoned with FIFTY GOOD ONES, in green and yellow. She hopes Gully will have the patience for a bit of ceremony. Geneva cutting the cake, having her moment. She hopes the inscription is not too casual.

  Geneva now looks as though she has backed away from the room and found its limits at the table’s edge. Guests do not seem to have noticed her isolation, or else they do not want the responsibility of cheering up the guest of honor. Now that Mary Courter has moved on, Geneva looks positively grim, her mouth shut tightly as though taped. Of course she could go up to any one of her twenty or so guests—she has never been shy, and she loves to talk—but she stands her place with a stolid look. “People came,” Ursula thinks of going to her and saying. “Give them that.”

  The cloth between Ursula’s fingers is starting to feel hot from friction. Important people aren’t even here yet—son and sister—and Gully has fled to the yard.

  “It’s not like she asked you to do it,” Michael said that morning as Ursula, sleepy and resentful, was loading the car. Saturdays are for sleeping in. Why is all this rah-rah her responsibility? All Geneva has ever done for her is pass on envelopes of clipped coupons and recipes, and insult her at Christmas with gifts of control-top pantyhose.