by Amanda Cross
“You make it sound sinister.”
“It is, more times than not. Some guy is doing a paper on livers. He needs samples. He takes them, even when they can be fairly sure that the liver is not responsible. Have to have enough data for one’s paper. Often the patients are poor or ignorant and can’t object, but even rich patients have to take the doctor’s word for everything. But don’t let me sound too cynical; the fact is, I like looking at livers and other bits and pieces. I should have been a doctor, not the kind that helps people, but the kind who tries to find out what started an epidemic, that sort of thing. You’re easy to talk to. Or perhaps I just need to talk. And don’t tell me I should see a psychiatrist. That’s what Arthur keeps saying when I mention that I might like to talk to him about our life. Arthur’s my husband, a brain surgeon. He’s a little less skilled at what’s in brains he isn’t cutting up.”
“Which is why Mark Hansford was a sort of trial run away from Arthur?” Kate asked.
“A pretty sad trial run. I guess I knew he wasn’t going to be any better at listening than Arthur. Do you think men were born without some essential equipment for listening when they aren’t paid for it, and even sometimes when they are? Do you imagine Gabrielle thought the same thing? I know the prevailing opinion is that Emmanuel got all he knew about women by listening to her, but doesn’t that come under the heading of being paid for it?”
Kate decided to latch on to the only subject about which she could inquire without seeming to probe. Women may know how to listen, but few individuals of either sex know how to demonstrate interest as opposed to curiosity. In any case, questions were rarely the way to manifest genuine interest.
“I’d like to hear more about your mother,” Kate said. “Anne obviously liked her; she seemed to have a rough row to hoe.”
“More like sailing into the wind, I should have said. Oh, my father was fascinating in his way. I thought him wonderful because, like his sister Hilda, I was truly loved by him. But he could be devastating. I remember once his telling Nellie at the beach club that he’d got bigger breasts than she. It was true, of course; Nellie had tiny little breasts, and my father was rather fat. But it wasn’t the sort of thing a sensitive man said to an adolescent girl. Anne and I both felt bad for her, though Anne said she wished she had breasts like Nellie’s, and I think Nellie believed her. My father wasn’t easy on my mother. He just went around being noble to people like the Foxxes and left my mother to cope with the results. And she did cope, beautifully. My aunt Hilda scorned her; so did I, until quite recently. She wasn’t a glamorous person. I think the only person she ever brought into the household was Anne; perhaps she sensed a potential ally, someone like herself.”
“You all seem to have been so marvelously generous,” Kate said. “Anne clearly thought so.”
“With reservations,” Dorinda said. “I’ve read that memoir. She sent it to me, as was only decent of her. Anne is always decent. I know that sounds condescending, but I don’t mean it to. I’ve come to admire decency more than I used to. I used to call it values. But today one can’t help noticing the people who talk most about values tend to get involved in the most steamy scandals. That’s what I’d call Anne: decent. And she was right to say that our generosity cost us little. She gave as much as she got, like most adopted children.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you treated her and Nellie well, and somehow never lost either of them. I think that’s worthy of quite a tribute.”
“Maybe. I credit my mother with most of that. Oh, I liked playing Lady Bountiful when I was young; until rather recently, in fact. I was playing Lady Bountiful with Mark Hansford.”
Kate suddenly remembered a time in her youth, though she could not remember where it was, when she had put a quarter into one of those gambling machines and been rewarded with so many quarters she needed help in gathering them up; she remembered not knowing where to put them, how to carry them, until a kind woman gave her a brown paper bag.
“Do you think I might call your mother and ask her to talk with me?” Kate asked.
“Do you know something about you that is most unusual? I’ve taken to noticing this, so I might as well mention it. You don’t ask questions unless you really want to know the answer. Arthur asks questions all the time, it’s his only means of discourse—conversation I will not call it—and he never listens to the answers. I told that to Mark Hansford before I realized he was exactly the same way. About my mother, do call her. I’ll give you her number, and tell her to expect a call. She was probably the last person to see Gabrielle, and she certainly had the most objective view of Nellie; also, I suspect that Nellie talked to her about things she didn’t mention to Anne and me, though I’ve only recently come to realize that.”
“She must be old, as Master Shallow said to Falstaff,” Kate remarked, feeling skittish.
“She’s ninety-two, but you’ll find she can talk to you about the Foxxes, all right. She’s very clear on the old days. It’s the immediate past and the present about which she gets a little fuzzy and forgetful. She’s a nice person; always was.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean you won’t talk to me anymore yourself.”
“I’ll be glad to talk to you,” Dorinda said. “I’ve found when one begins to remember, one remembers more than one knew. Proust and all that: you can only really remember what you’ve forgotten. But for me, Emmanuel Foxx was a glamorous figure; I liked to have fantasies, if you can believe it, about being the last woman in his life to inspire him. I never told Nellie that, of course. Nellie’s the one who really loved Gabrielle, but, as with so many families, only when she was away from her. You must talk to Nellie. I’ll help you. I’d like to help you. Shall I tell you something awful? I read recently about a number of women, all gifted, if not geniuses they were remarkably talented, who took up with young men in their old age. And I learned something from that. I’ve begun collecting these women, I’ve got four so far. It isn’t just that old men are still sexy and old women are not, as I always thought. It’s that old men have power. And when old women have it, they become sexy too. Sexy is just another word for clout once you’re past forty.”
“You’re right,” Kate said. “I’ve noticed it too.”
“You mean you’ve always known it. Let me tell you all the other facts about me.” She held up her hand, prepared to raise one finger for each fact. “I like medical research. I learn from thinking about the past. I have four sons, which is one less than Sally Seton, but I do not grow blue hydrangeas or flowers of any other color. Otherwise, Lady Rosseter and I have a lot in common. I have a husband to whom I have not really talked in at least twenty years; if the CIA were to overhear one of our phone conversations, they’d be certain we were speaking in code, there being no other rational explanation for such an impersonal exchange.” She dropped her hand. “Five facts. I like talking to you. Let me pay for the lunch. I know, you invited me, but you can pay next time when I promise to answer all your questions about Gabrielle. I like your questions.”
And Kate agreed, knowing there are some things we must pay for because it feels, at that moment, like the right thing to do.
“Who’s Sally Seton when she’s at home, as you have told me Molly Bloom put it?” Reed asked that evening. They were sipping single-malt scotch and relating the events of their day. Reed’s day had offered more frustrations than events, the number of the former being responsible for the lack of the latter, and he was glad to forget it and hear about Dorinda and Sally Seton.
“Sally Seton is a character in a novel by Virginia Woolf called Mrs. Dalloway,” Kate said. “She is wild and wonderful in her youth, and turns into a dreadful lady who lives a life of aching rectitude and propriety. What’s interesting is not only that Dorinda so characterizes herself but that Anne mentioned Sally Seton also in her memoir. They must have read that novel together while they were reading Elizabeth Bowen.”
“
Of whom I have heard. Lived longer than Woolf.”
“Correct, oh you dear man who listens. I never thought about what an unusual man you are in that respect until Dorinda mentioned it, indirectly of course.”
“I am unusual in every respect, as I thought you knew.”
“Not least of all in putting up with me.” They both laughed, having had a version of this conversation many times before.
“Going to see Dorinda’s mother soon?” Reed asked by the time they were onto their second drink.
“Certainly. Although talking to a ninety-two-year-old woman may be rather uphill work. Still, maybe she will surprise me; Dorinda did. Is there a greater joy than watching people you’ve pegged become unpegged? Do you know the most surprising thing about Dorinda, among so many surprises? Rhetorical questions, no response required. She must have realized I had read in Anne’s memoir about her wild youth. Her mentioning Sally Seton told me that. And yet, she has decided to trust me. I have a feeling she hasn’t trusted many people lately. Perhaps if one can begin to trust one’s mother in one’s sixties, one is ready for anything.”
“Unless,” Reed said, “one is sufficiently lucky never to be given the chance. Not all mothers are redeemable.”
“Alas, how true. I must not be carried away, as you so wisely suggest, by some totally unwarranted belief in the possibilities of human nature.”
“One is carried away,” Reed said sternly, “when one drinks single-malt scotch: that is one of its beautiful qualities.”
Eleanor Goddard, at ninety-two, lived in half of the apartment the Goddards had occupied in the old days. The landlord, while the building was still a rental and not a co-op, had persuaded her to abandon the back half of her nine rooms. This left her a huge living room without the Capehart, a dining room, a large bedroom, and a smaller bedroom for her companion, plus two and a half bathrooms. She preferred, she told Kate, not to speculate about what price the landlord had got for the back part of her apartment.
Eleanor, as Kate was asked to call her, was elegantly dressed and sitting in the living room when Kate was introduced by someone pleasant in a white uniform. They were soon left alone, and Kate had barely seated herself before she was assured that Dorinda had called about her, and that she, Eleanor, would be happy to talk about the Foxxes or anyone else.
“There aren’t many people who ask for the privilege of listening to the memories of a very old lady. I remember Pop, as we called Sig’s father, rambling on endlessly and I swore when I was old I would never talk about anything past unless specifically asked. Believe me, it is nice to be asked. Can I offer you something, tea, a drink, a soft drink?”
“I’m just fine,” Kate said. “Unless you want something. I’m happy just to talk and listen.”
“Lovely. I wonder what you made of Dorinda. How did she impress you?”
“I was hoping to be the one asking questions,” Kate said, smiling. “I liked Dorinda. I had the distinct impression that she is reconsidering her life, which is, on the whole, a good thing to do.”
“On the whole?”
Kate marveled that she had found the sharpest old lady in the universe. Would she answer questions as neatly as she asked them? “Many people I know,” Kate said, “most of them relatives and family friends, reconsider their lives only as a way to replay old injuries, old ways in which life did them dirt. I had the sense from Dorinda that she was reconsidering for the future, not to belabor the past.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Dorinda has always been a puzzle to me; I admit it freely. Even as a baby, she and I never seemed to be in touch. We had another girl living with us named Anne, and she was the sort of child I would have expected to have. She’s been closer to me than Dorinda, if truth be told, and when you’re ninety-two you’re either telling the truth or the same old stories unchanged. Odd to only begin really talking to your daughter when she’s over sixty and you’re older than God, as Sig used to say.
“The problem, really, was Dorinda’s marriage. I could never understand why she married Arthur. Well, the truth is, I could never understand anything about Dorinda, but her marriage least of all. It always reminded me of that old story about the most beautiful woman in London who married the dullest man in England. When asked why, she said it was the only way she could be certain of never again having to sit next to him at dinner. But that hardly seems motive enough for Dorinda. You came to talk about Gabrielle Foxx, and here I am babbling on about my daughter.”
“I gather from Dorinda that your husband was far from the dullest man anywhere.”
“No one could call Sig dull,” Eleanor agreed. “No, there is no way anyone could call him that. He plucked me out of a lower-middle-class world, working-class really, where we always tried to pretend we had more than we did. Sig and the Goddards and all their friends never pretended that; I used to think because it wasn’t possible to have more than they did, so why pretend!” She chuckled. “They were Jews, you know, which meant they lacked that essential dullness that does rather mark Anglo-Saxons. I remember during the war. World War II I mean, Sig and his family did a lot to rescue Jews from Germany and Austria and other countries. Some of these Jewish families had been rich themselves, in Europe. When they came here, they all complained endlessly about America and about how much better everything was in the old country. Sig was far more tolerant of that than I. But what,” she said, shaking her head, “has that to do with anything. Forgive me, my dear. Everyone I used to know is dead. And even when I read about some old person who has done or said something, she is always younger than I am, though sometimes not much. I am a relic. You must keep me on the Foxxes and ask your questions.”
“All of this is important to my work, and interesting besides. Honestly. Did you get the name Dorinda from Ellen Glasgow?”
“Yes I did, dear. Oh, clever of you! Everyone else assumed I made it up to be fancy; I said I liked the name and that was that. Sig would only have cared about a son’s name. The truth is, I read Barren Ground while I was pregnant with Dorinda; it had just come out. I don’t know why that novel affected me as it did. I think I hoped my daughter would have Dorinda’s courage. She had so much when she was young, and so little later, my Dorinda, I mean. But perhaps that is changing. Have you met Arthur!”
Kate shook her head. “It’s a fate best avoided,” Eleanor said. “I tried to think that even bores are interesting because they’re bores. There has got to be something interesting about everyone, if you don’t see them too often. That was a nice thought, but Arthur defeated it.”
“Maybe you saw him too often?”
“Not really. He was always at the hospital, or playing golf, or somewhere else. But if he did come home, you could feel the temperature of the room drop, as though someone had splashed cold water around. I never liked Arthur, and the remarkable thing is, he is the first person I ever admitted not liking. It was a great relief. But it didn’t do much to bring Dorinda and me closer.” She paused, as though, Kate thought, in amazement at how much she had said. She looked expectantly at Kate.
“How often did you see Gabrielle?” Kate asked.
“Let me see. I first saw her when Hilda decided to marry Emile. Sig and I sailed, on the Ile de France I think it was, but we crossed the ocean often and I may have the wrong ship. Travel was a joy in those days. It was clear that Gabrielle was not at all pleased with the marriage, and I didn’t blame her. We tended to talk while everyone else was dancing attendance on Emmanuel, and I knew how she felt. I think we both realized that Emile was a substitute-Emmanuel for Hilda, her way into the exciting world of Paris writers, and, understandably, Gabrielle wanted someone to love Emile for himself.
“Gabrielle kindly took me for short walks in Paris; our absence was hardly noticed, certainly not by anyone but Emmanuel who would suddenly want something, discover she wasn’t there, and insist she must be found at once. I think she was a kind of talisman for him,
something he felt lost without. Everyone would come rushing to search us out—we were always sitting in a café not far off—and Gabrielle would have to go back. I sometimes felt we were mysteriously on the edge of a real conversation, but it never happened. Perhaps if I had stayed on longer, it would have, but that’s probably an old woman’s memory filtered through rose-colored glasses. Are you sure you won’t have something to drink, or some tea?”
“Quite sure,” Kate said. “When was the next time you saw her?”
“My goodness; there hasn’t been anyone hanging on my every word since—well, perhaps no one ever hung on my words; Anne, maybe. Certainly neither Sig nor Dorinda did. I saw Gabrielle a few times when we were in Europe before the war. When Emmanuel died, the war was on and it wasn’t possible to go to Gabrielle; Sig got Hilda out just in the nick of time; she was in a rest home; Emile had left her. Nellie, their daughter, was living with Gabrielle, and we brought her, Nellie, over to America. I guess you know all that. I often think back at the cruelty of our taking away the last person Gabrielle had left, but of course we were all just thinking of the girl. She was exactly Dorinda’s age and dying to come to America and live with us. We are often so cruel without meaning it, as though that were an excuse. I try to tell myself Nellie might have been killed, but that’s hardly the point.”
These last words were said in a slow, drawling manner, and Kate saw that Eleanor had dosed off; her head dropped slightly to one side; her eyes were closed. Kate sat watching her for quite a while, marveling at the woman. After a time, the attendant in white came in and spoke softly to Kate.
“She hasn’t talked that long since I’ve been here, and that’s seven years. She’ll sleep a while now. It doesn’t mean she wasn’t glad to see you; it’s her age, you know.”