by Hood, Ann
Lotte had managed to dress in an old black dress that was too tight for her more ample body.
“Vivvie,” she said at the sight of her friend putting two loaves of bread into the oven to bake. “You need to write it.”
Vivien felt flushed from the heat of the oven, and from her own guilty conscience.
“Write it?” she said.
People were approaching the house. Robert and the boys would carry the small wooden coffin up the hill to the family cemetery. Already, Robert was out there, digging Pamela’s grave.
“Pamela’s obituary,” Lotte said, her voice hoarse from crying.
“Oh, Lotte,” Vivien said. “I can’t. I only do that for people I don’t know. People I don’t love.”
The door opened and Sebastian walked in to the kitchen. Vivien could feel his eyes on her, but she refused to meet his gaze.
“But you have to,” Lotte said. “Tell the world about my Pamela, Viv. Tell them how she is, what she’s like, so no one forgets.”
“No one will forget,” Vivien said.
How she wished this man would go away. But he stood there, waiting. Her cheeks burned.
“You have to,” Lotte said again.
Vivien knew that grief made people unreasonable. Selfish. It was unrelenting and illogical.
She put her arm around her friend.
“Of course,” she said. “I will write the obituary.”
FIVE
If you see acquaintances of yours in deepest mourning, it does not occur to you to go up to them and babble trivial topics or ask them to a dance or dinner. If you pass close to them, irresistible sympathy compels you merely to stop and press their hand and pass on.
—FROM Etiquette, BY EMILY POST, 1922
9
What Her Mother Taught Her
CLAIRE, 1961
Claire came from a generation of women who did not question things. A generation raised by women who didn’t question. Before her mother died, during the sixteen years when they got to be mother and daughter, she’d taught Claire the things she believed a woman needed to know: always wear a hat to keep the sun off your face so you don’t get wrinkles; moisturize every day; never go to bed with your makeup on; if you put Vaseline on your hands and a pair of white cotton gloves over them and go to bed like that, your hands will always be soft; a man likes soft hands; always get up before your husband so that you can do your own morning routine in private, make yourself look pretty, and have his breakfast ready when he wakes up; keep up on current events; agree with your husband’s opinion, even if you think he’s a horse’s ass for believing that; buy lard fresh from the butcher and use it in fried chicken, piecrusts, and seven-minute frosting; the key to a perfect dinner is to serve meat with a starch and a vegetable and to always have candlelight; everything tastes better when eaten by candlelight; know how to sew a hem, darn a sock, replace a button—these skills help to make you indispensable; never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink or cigarette butts in the ashtray; never refuse your husband’s sexual desires; get your hair done every week; when asked to bring something to a dinner party, bring it on a plate that you leave as a gift; always let the man drive; men take out the trash and mow the lawn; always wait for the man to open a door for you and light your cigarette; a woman needs to know how to swim, skate, and ride a bike; never swear in front of a man; and Claire, honey, love goes out the window when there’s no money. A woman knows how to live on a budget, to stretch a dollar, to cook hamburger meat at least six different ways, in patties and Salisbury steak and chili and poor man’s beef Stroganoff and Sloppy Joes and meatloaf.
Her mother spoke, and Claire listened.
“At thirty cents a pound,” her mother would say, shaping hamburger with chopped onion and Worcestershire sauce into perfect patties, “I can make four of these. One for you, one for me, two for Daddy.”
Claire watched her mother, always in a dress covered with an apron, always in high heels and earrings, move around the kitchen like it was a dance floor. The wallpaper was yellow with a pattern of red and blue teapots. The stove and refrigerator matched, both a shade of yellow that even now, when Claire saw something that color, made her think of her mother. If she closed her eyes she could even smell her mother’s L’Air du Temps and Aqua Net.
“Why does Daddy get two?” Claire asked. She sat perched on the sink with its blue plastic drainer, neat stack of Brillo pads, gold container of Borax, and the ceramic frog whose gaping mouth held sponges.
“Number one,” her mother said without breaking stride, slicing tomatoes and shredding iceberg lettuce, “because he’s worked all day, and number two because women have to watch their weight.”
On warm nights, Claire and her mother sat together on the glider on the screened-in porch and listened to the crickets. In the distance, where the houses stopped and the fields began, they could sometimes see fireflies. As a little girl, she would join other neighborhood children and collect them in an empty mayonnaise jar. Her mother poked holes in the lid so they could at least live a few hours.
“Watch,” her mother said. “They flash for six seconds, then go dark for six seconds.”
Claire watched and counted. Six seconds of flashing. Six seconds of darkness.
“Like Morse code,” her mother said.
From the basement came the sound of her father’s electric saw.
“What message are they sending?” Claire asked.
“The males are calling the females, I think. Look at me! Look at me!”
Claire smiled, but her mother looked serious, staring off at the light show.
“Are you happy?” Claire blurted, surprising herself. She had never considered such a thing before, if her mother was happy or not.
“Don’t be silly,” her mother said softly.
“What is love?” Claire used to ask her mother as they sat together at the kitchen table waiting for their nails to dry, blowing on them and waving them in the air. China Doll Red or Bermuda Pink or Coral Reef, the shiny colors glistened and her mother always answered the same way.
“You just know.”
Such an unsatisfying answer. Claire would scowl and try to figure out what her mother meant. Was love so unique, so special, that when it happened it made itself absolutely known? The way Gloria Delray performed her cheers every Saturday at football games. She shook her pompoms and shouted Give me a W as if no one could possibly be a better cheerleader, a prettier girl. She jumped the highest and did the most cartwheels and smiled the widest brightest smile.
“Sometimes,” Claire said softly, “I hate Gloria Delray.”
“Don’t say hate,” her mother said, predictably.
“Well then,” Claire said, blowing on her nails again, “I dislike her tremendously.”
Her mother tried to hide a smile, but Claire glimpsed it.
“What’s so bad about Gloria Delray?” her mother said. She was debating whether or not it was safe to apply the next coat of polish.
“She thinks she’s so great,” Claire said.
“Is she?”
Claire glared at her mother.
“Is she great?” her mother asked.
“Well, she’s a good cheerleader,” Claire said, reluctantly.
“So are you,” her mother said, pointing a perfect finger at her.
“Not as good as her,” Claire admitted.
“Then work harder at it. Practice more.”
“How did you know you loved Daddy?” Claire asked as her mother took her hand in her own soft one and carefully applied the final coat of polish to each of her short square nails.
This time her mother didn’t hide her smile. “He walked in that dance and I saw him and I thought That is the man I’m going to marry.”
Claire sighed in frustration.
“But how could you know that?” she asked.
“Don’t wiggle,” her mother said. She seemed to be considering Claire’s question carefully. “He had confidence. Broad shoulders and a
certain way of entering a room that told me he would be a good husband. A man who would get things done. Take care of things.”
Claire watched the lovely top of her mother’s ash blonde hair as she slowly moved the brush from bottle to nail.
“This was before the world went crazy, of course,” her mother said finally. “The stock market hadn’t crashed. People hadn’t lost all their money. Banks hadn’t closed.” She shook her head, remembering. “People were . . . I don’t know . . . hopeful. Black Friday and the war took away all that hope, I’m afraid.”
“You knew you loved him because you felt hopeful?” Claire persisted.
Her mother laughed. “Maybe. Yes. Back then, you could take a look at a man and believe the two of you were going to fall in love and live happily ever after.”
“I feel hopeful,” Claire said even though she wasn’t sure she did feel hopeful. Or even understand what her mother was talking about.
Her mother kissed the palm of Claire’s hand.
“That’s good, sweetheart. Don’t ever lose that. Love goes out the window when there’s no money, you know. A woman has to stay strong. Men aren’t really very strong at all.”
“They aren’t?” Claire said. She thought about Danny Jones, the quarterback who went out with Gloria Delray, the boy every girl including Claire longed to have notice her. Danny Jones looked very strong. Once, Claire had seen him pick Gloria up by the waist as if she were weightless.
“At the first sign of trouble, a man falls apart. That’s why women have to work so hard to stay optimistic and upbeat, to be frugal and understanding. To not question everything,” her mother added.
Later, when her mother came in to kiss her good night, Claire asked her if love felt like ginger ale bubbles.
“What you want,” her mother said, “is someone who can take care of you. A man who can provide for you and your children. Someone steady. Someone predictable. If you want to feel ginger ale bubbles, Claire, drink a glass of ginger ale.”
All of that, the cooking together and watching the fireflies and talking about love, happened a year or so before her mother died, when Claire first got breasts, when boys started to notice her. In the time that had passed since those afternoons at the kitchen table, painting their nails or playing Crazy Eights or making Waldorf salad—Claire carefully mixing the apples and nuts her mother had chopped into the mayonnaise and sour cream—Claire wondered what advice her mother would give her now. Would she have said Claire should marry Peter, a good provider, a man who was indeed steady but who could not show warmth or share intimacies? What would she think of Claire now, pregnant with someone else’s baby? Living in shame every time her husband even glanced at her? Fuck me, Claire used to whisper to Miles. Hadn’t her mother told her that a woman never swears in front of a man? She could still hear her mother saying “H-E-double hockey sticks!” when her cake came out of the oven too dry or her gravy lumped up. Fuck me, Claire would beg him.
Sometimes, driving home from meeting Miles, her thighs sticky and her skin flushed pink, Claire got a clear picture of her mother, as clear as if she had seen her just yesterday: wearing a soft green dress cinched at the waist with a yellow ruffled apron over it and beige high-heeled pumps, bent over the oven, her back straight, a dish towel she had knit herself, off-white with even red stripes, in her hands, as she pulled out a cake pan. She touched the top of the cake with her fingertip, able to tell its doneness by the way it sprang back. “H-E-double hockey sticks,” she said, her voice so full of disappointment that Claire’s heart broke remembering. “It’s only a cake,” Claire’s father told her. Her mother looked at him, “George,” she said, “It’s not just a cake. This is what I do.”
Standing at the nurses’ station in that hospital where her mother-in-law lay dying down the hall, Claire’s mind raced with these memories, strange fragments she thought she had forgotten. She thought of Gloria Delray, who had gone to college, to the University of Indiana in Bloomington.
“What are you studying there?” Claire had asked her that first winter after they’d graduated from high school and Gloria had come home for the holidays. The two girls ran into each other at the five-and-dime on a cold afternoon just before Christmas. Outside the wind howled. The sky was gray with snow-filled clouds. Gloria had her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and she wore a red and white University of Indiana jacket over a red turtleneck and dark blue dungarees. She smiled at Claire as if Claire didn’t know anything about anything.
“I’m going to get my MRS,” Gloria said in the same sure way she used to order a crowd of hundreds to give her a W.
At first, Claire didn’t understand what Gloria meant. By the time she did, Gloria was already heading toward the door, clutching her bag of last-minute presents: a bottle of Jean Naté and a tin of cherry pipe tobacco and a matchbox car.
“Oh!” Claire said, thinking that Gloria was clever. “Your MRS! But what about Danny?”
Gloria laughed. “Danny isn’t going anywhere, Claire.”
If her mother had been alive that day, Claire would have asked her what she thought about that. Danny Jones was working in his family’s supermarket. He would be a good provider, Claire thought. Her father had some saying about how the cobbler’s son always had shoes. Danny’s children would always have food, wouldn’t they? Where exactly did Gloria want to go with her MRS?
“Are you lost?” an orderly pushing a mop asked Claire.
Yes, Claire wanted to say, but she shook her head and thanked him.
Slowly she made her way back to Birdy’s room where nothing had changed. The old woman lay in the bed, unmoving. Peter was gone, probably getting more coffee. The room seemed vacant, even though someone was in it.
Claire went to the window and adjusted the blinds, letting in the early morning sun. She paused to admire the way the ice-covered branches glistened.
When she turned back around, she was surprised to see her mother-in-law’s eyes open.
Claire smiled at her, but the old woman’s face was crossed with confusion.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Claire. I’m Claire.” Claire wondered if she should go and get someone, a nurse or even the doctor.
The old woman stared at her hard. Then her face softened and she shook her head sadly. “I thought you were someone else,” she said, and closed her eyes.
“No,” Claire said.
She waited, but her mother-in-law did not speak or open her eyes again.
When Peter came in, he stopped as soon as he saw the look on Claire’s face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Your mother,” Claire said. “She talked to me.”
His eyes shifted from Claire’s face to his mother’s. “Claire,” he said as if he were speaking to Kathy.
“She opened her eyes and asked who I was and when I told her she got disappointed and said she thought I was someone else. Then she went back to sleep.”
“She knows you,” Peter said. “Don’t be silly.”
Claire didn’t respond. The man is always right, even when he’s wrong. Wasn’t that what her mother had told her?
“I’m feeling quite irritable,” Claire said.
“Are you feeling sick again?”
“Irritable,” Claire said gruffly.
“I believe you,” Peter chuckled.
They stared at his mother, Claire half expecting her eyes to fly open and for her to say something else. But she didn’t. The big hand on the clock moved noisily into place.
“I should have brought my knitting,” Claire said, although she didn’t really want to tackle that difficult sweater.
“Why don’t you go back to the house and get it?” Peter said.
The idea of getting fresh air, of being free of all this and driving through the snowy city suddenly seemed like exactly what she needed.
“Would you mind?”
Peter dropped into one of the hard chairs and picked up the Globe. “No need for you to b
e bored to tears,” he said.
“I’ll get it and come right back,” Claire said.
But Peter didn’t answer. He already appeared involved in a news article.
She put on her coat and still-damp gloves.
“I’ll need the keys,” she said.
“They’re in my pocket,” he said, indicating his jacket hanging behind the door.
“Well then,” she said after she’d collected them and picked up her purse.
“Drive slow,” he said. “It’s icy.”
Of course it was icy. Hadn’t they just had a huge blizzard?
But she told him she would be extra careful.
“By the way,” Peter said. “I found a TV, up in what they call the solarium. We can watch the inauguration.”
“Oh, good,” Claire said.
“Hurry back,” Peter said as she moved toward the door.
As soon as she emerged from the car, Claire heard Kathy crying. Moving as fast as she could up the narrow path Jimmy had shoveled, she climbed the steps, finding the front door unlocked. That smell of oil heat and yesterday’s supper hit her as soon as she walked into the small foyer, and Claire swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat.
The steps that led up to her mother-in-law’s apartment stretched invitingly in front of her. The thought of climbing back into bed appealed to Claire much more than dealing with Connie and Jimmy and all of their children. But Kathy’s crying did not seem to be letting up. Claire took a few deep breaths, then pushed the door to the downstairs apartment open. Cartoons blared from the television, and a trail of toy soldiers and crushed Frosted Flakes led to the kitchen. Claire hardly noticed the little boy in the big wet diaper chewing on one of the soldiers.
“Darling,” she said, lifting Kathy from the high chair where she sat, red-faced from screaming.
“Who the hell is Mimi?” Connie said. She was sitting on a stool at the breakfast counter, still in her nightgown, smoking a cigarette.