by Newall, Liz;
Then conversations would start, the women usually talking about this aunt or that cousin or when Donna and Sarah were growing up. Joe always dominated the men’s conversation with some gardening advice or questions for Jack about the price on something he wanted to buy—like a yard tractor or a lawn mower. All conversations would go on simultaneously. It was maddening. Joe would be saying something and Donna would turn to me with the tail end of some gossip she’d just heard. Then Vivienne would ask me right in the middle of both if I needed more ice. I wanted to jump up, I don’t know how many times, and scream, “Hell no! I don’t need anything but some sanity around here!”
Of course, I wouldn’t do that to Vivienne. She was a nice lady, pretty for her age, but so busy. I never saw her sit through an entire meal.
The idea of her lying still in that casket is mind-boggling. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her still for more than five seconds at a time.
When we were first married, I told Donna her mother’s busyness was an escape mechanism. Donna said, “Escape from what? Mama’s always been busy.” I guess it’s hard to see personality disorders in your own parents, but I could sure see it in Vivienne. Up and down, pouring tea, getting more hot rolls, bringing in dessert.
Dessert. That’s another food fettish. If you don’t want dessert, you’d better say you’re highly allergic to it and your throat will close up if you eat a single bite. If you say, “No thank you,” they’ll say, “Oh, have some.” If you hesitate for a second, they take that as “Yes, I’d love a huge serving.” If you say, “No” another time, they think you mean “Just a medium piece, please.” And if you don’t eat all of it, you’ll get, “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?” After months of this, Joe finally told me, “I know your problem. You’re allergic to natural foods like sugar and honey and cream. What’d they feed you up there, anyhow?” I realize by now I have a role too, that bastard of a son-in-law from Massachusetts.
Donna’s role at Sunday dinner was to keep some banter going and to say things like “Mama, the rice isn’t sticky, it’s just fine,” or “Daddy, these tomatoes are so sweet and juicy! Did you grow them?” Sarah’s role at first was to laugh occasionally and turn her eyes to Jack. But the last few years that changed. She didn’t have much to say, as if she were ill at ease half the time. At one point I almost felt a kinship, but her uneasiness was different. Just before she left, she would sit through the entire dinner without a word. I couldn’t believe that no one else noticed it. Too busy in their own roles, maybe.
Then there’s Jack. You’d have thought he was blood kin the way Joe used to treat him. He’s smart, I’ll admit. But it’s all in sales. I never could put him and Sarah together. She’s better suited to a musician or mime or circus performer or obviously a large-animal veterinarian, than to a rotarian president.
Donna says Jack will be here, but I haven’t seen him. She doesn’t miss a face. This place is packed, but she’ll go through who’s here and what they’re wearing and where they’re sitting. I wonder if Jack will sit with the family, if he comes.
I’ve not seen him in a year or more. He and Sarah used to come over every week. Jack beat me on “The Price Is Right” a time or two, but I took him on “Jeopardy” every time unless they had a car category like Autos of the ’50s. That’s what we used to do when Sarah and Jack came over. Donna and Sarah would go to the kitchen and talk or take care of the twins, while Jack and I played gameshows. They quit coming over. Donna said she thought Jack was too busy at the car lot. I thought he might just be tired of my beating him at Jeopardy. But I guess he was busy. And to be honest, he’s done well. From salesman to head man. But the thing that gets me is, while he was talking his way up the dealership ladder and getting more money at every rung, I was paying out money and working my ass off to get a Ph.D. Seven years, it took me, mainly because I taught a full load the whole time. Three classes every semester, and one each session of summer school, too.
The whole time Donna was after me to let her have a baby. “Just one,” she’d say, “just one.” Then she’d hang all over me and kiss my neck and rub against me. We couldn’t afford a hamster much less a baby. But I promised her the day I got my hands on that sheepskin that said “Andrew Webster, Ph.D.” she could throw her pills out the window. She did. And I had her pumped up within a month. Even I couldn’t believe I’d get her pregnant so fast. Joe and Vivienne seemed happy and upset at the same time, maybe because of Sarah’s miscarriages. I tried to tell Jack and Sarah to go to a specialist, but Sarah seemed to think if she tried harder she could have one, and Jack, I think, had lost interest by then.
Donna’s “just one” came out two. I helped deliver them. I never saw so much blood and mess. Being a doctor of psychology doesn’t really prepare you. It was a long time before I wanted to make love again. Of course, Donna was in no condition for a while. But even after she was, I kept dreaming those coiled up umbilical cords were wrapped around my throat. Not exactly an erotic dream. I finally got over it. Now I have that dream only once or twice a year.
I feel it in here though, as if I’m drowning in a sea of females. Kate and Sarah and Donna and the twins all sucking the air right out of my lungs.
I named one of the twins Charlotte after my mother, and Donna named the other one Scarlet because she said “It rhymes.” That’s they way they talk and hear around here. Donna can’t hear the difference between “pen” and “pin.” None of them can. They’re not too particular about getting the right pronunciation of a word as long as they understand each other. But some words they’re really picky about, especially if they consider them to be signs of manners.
I still call Joe, Mr. Crawford to his face. Did the same with Vivienne. And that’s after knowing them all these years. Right after Donna and I were married, I called them by their first names. You would have thought I proposed incest. Donna said it just sounded a little strange, my being younger. She tried to get me to call them Mama and Daddy. That didn’t work either. Now the twins call them Mama C. and Daddy C. which is all right with the Crawfords. But they have their own standard of propriety and etiquette around here that is unlike the rest of the country, the world for that matter.
That’s just the way these people are, and sometimes it takes an unencumbered observer to recognize it. Take the civil war at the fire station. When I was first dating Donna, all Mr. Crawford could talk about was the mess at the volunteer fire station, and his garden, of course. For several months, the community had a problem with fires—brush piles, open fields, vacant tenant houses, that sort of thing.
Then one night, Mr. Crawford caught a boy in the middle of a field with a gasoline can in hand. The boy ran away but not before Mr. Crawford recognized him. The fire chief’s son. Then the proverbial ash can hit the fan. When Mr. Crawford reported his findings, the chief denied it, his son denied it, and half the firemen couldn’t believe it. The other half not only believed it but wanted the boy publicly whipped.
I tried to explain to Donna’s father that whether the fire chief denied it or not, he’d keep an eye on his son and the fires would stop. And as for the boy, the fires were probably a plea for attention. But Mr. Crawford insisted that he had been called a liar and as far as the boy’s need for attention went, a public whipping would work just dandy. You can’t tell Joe anything. At least I can’t. Donna said, “It’s not what you say, Andrew, but the way you say it. Daddy doesn’t trust anyone with an accent.” As if he speaks the King’s English.
Donna’s not that stubborn. She usually listens to reason. That’s more than I can say for the rest of them. Not that the Crawfords aren’t smart. At least the women, they all read. And Donna’s Aunt Kate is almost a scholar. I enjoy talking philosophy with Kate. She says literature is truer than history, and she has a point, although she oversimplifies. But she’s a little loosely woven sometimes, morally speaking. She goes through boyfriends as fast as she reads novels. Not the best example for Sarah and Donna, growing up. She hasn’t had one around lat
ely. Thank God. The twins were beginning to wonder why Aunt Kate had so many men and no husband. I told her what they said. She said to tell them she hadn’t found one with a long enough plot. She didn’t crack a smile, as though it were the normal way to behave and she wondered why I asked.
She’s not shedding a tear this morning, but she looks hungover. I suppose she tied one on last night. It’s her grief release mechanism—superior, if you ask me, to stuffing one’s face. She’s not wearing black either, thank God. Donna is. I’ve never seen her in black up close to her face like that. Something about women in black that sets me on edge. Like boards on an old house, burned tree stumps, coal. I don’t like Donna in black. Not even black underwear. She belongs in soft blues and yellows and pinks.
Donna was wearing a pink evening gown the first time I saw her. Every summer the town organizers have some kind of festival. My first year here, it was a peach festival to increase sales for the fruit growers and local merchants. These people can’t have a festival without a beauty pageant, whether it’s Miss Peanut, Miss Pork, Little Miss Water Fall or whatever they’re celebrating. This is where I came in. My being from Massachusetts and a psychology professor and a bachelor at the time evidently made me a likely candidate for judge. I’d never even been to a beauty pageant before, but I’d helped judge a science fair and a few declamation contests, so I supposed there wouldn’t be too much to it.
The pageant started at 6:00 which I thought was a little early until I found out we had to select Miss Wee Blossom and Little Miss Nectarine before the main event, Miss Peach Queen, even started. By 8:30 I was sick of crinolines, whining children, and weeping mothers. If I had thought it wouldn’t affect my chance for tenure, I’d have walked out. But then they brought out the older girls, ones who’d undergone puberty. I relaxed a little and started enjoying the view. The first eleven contestants ranged from mildly cute to quite pretty. But the twelfth one looked like a P.E. coach with a wig. That’s who I thought it was at first, a clown of sorts to ease the tension. I laughed out loud. Alone. No one else was laughing. I couldn’t believe it. I asked the judge next to me who number twelve was. He said it was Crystabelle Dean. We weren’t supposed to know their names so I asked him how he knew. He said everybody in town knew her, her four brothers, her father, and her uncle in prison. All wrestlers, professional, including Crystabelle.
Now I didn’t know if he was kidding or not but I didn’t laugh anymore when she came out on stage, not even when she modeled her Jantzen swimsuit and the little diving girl insignia was stretched horizontally instead of vertically, not even when Crystabelle played “Old Black Joe” on a handsaw. Nobody did. We all clapped and looked straight ahead.
The one bright spot that got me through the night was watching Donna on stage. She was beautiful. She had a perfect little coed figure back then. Every outfit was pink, even her swimsuit and she had a little gait in that swimsuit that made me want to jump up and chase her behind the curtain. She played “Exodus” for her talent, mostly one-handed, but with such passion I almost had goose-bumps. I didn’t know her then but I knew I would very soon. She won Miss Peach Queen. The decision was unanimous and every judge except me had Crystabelle as first runner-up. I held out for second runner-up as a matter of principle.
That’s the way I met Donna. Love at first sight. Strange thing for a doctor of psychology to admit, but it’s true. If I could have gotten over her after I met the rest of the family, believe me, I would have. But she was so sweet and soft and sexy in a prissy kind of way that I had to marry her. I took her for better and the rest of the Crawfords for worse.
I hate funerals. Not that anybody likes them, except Lois Turpin and morticians. For me, they’re suffocating, a black sea of emotion. Reminds me of my father’s funeral. Mama, Nana, Aunt Ruth, all in black and all around me. I couldn’t see beyond black. I was no older than the twins. The only child of a dead man. And suddenly expected to become one’s own father, reincarnate.
Sarah looks as though she’s suffocating too. Hers has another source: guilt, I would venture a guess. As a professional, I sympathize. As brother-in-law, well … I’ll admit to some resentment.
I knew Sarah was ready to come home, and I told Donna that very fact. Vivienne’s illness was the perfect excuse, not that I don’t think Sarah loved her mother, as much as she could love anyone other than herself. I told Donna that too, but she didn’t like me saying Sarah was selfish. But she knows I’m right. I’m proficient at analyzing handwriting. Sarah’s t’s are prime examples of self-centeredness. Your t’s tell on you.
I’m right about her being ready to come home, too. She probably was bored with the vet and got enough roaming around. Her hormones have no doubt started to settle back down, leaving her less sexually inclined and more domestic. Not that she couldn’t control her actions. What she did was totally selfish and without regard as to what it would do to the rest of the Crawfords. Look at Vivienne. She already had problems but not this bad. Joe has become even more disagreeable and hard of hearing. And Jack. I never have thought he deserved his success but he certainly didn’t deserve this either. I don’t see how he’s kept his dealership going all year. I haven’t seen him since before Sarah left. He doesn’t come around here or to Joe’s at all. Everyone thought he and Joe were so close. It’s as if Sarah were their sole connection.
Donna and I have suffered the worst. Donna depended on Sarah so much for girl talk. Now she stores up bits and pieces all day long and unloads them on me with no thought to rhyme, reason, or chronological order. She’s had to take over her parents’ household and I’ve had to just about take over ours. Or I would have if it weren’t for this tenure project hanging over me. I haven’t decided what it is yet, but I have to come up with something soon or I’ll miss my chance.
As for sex, you can forget that at our house. For example, last Thursday, Donna came in tired and grumpy. She’d been at Joe’s house and then taken the twins to register for school; unfortunately, Charlotte was sick, and Scarlet had piano lessons. I’d been at the library researching ideas for my project, and when I came home, quite understandably, Donna didn’t have dinner prepared. But I didn’t complain. I knew she’d had a hard day as soon as I stepped inside the doorway and she started down the list. Not exactly down the list, more here and there and back again.
Then she said, “Am I getting fat?”
“No,” I told her. “You don’t need to gain any, but you’re fine, especially for a woman your age who’s had twins.” Then I offered to rub her back, that’s all, just rub her back. She wouldn’t let me touch her.
“Rub yourself!” she snapped and went to bed.
That’s not like my Donna. It’s this Sarah thing that’s done it to her. Kate’s the only one who hasn’t suffered, and I swear, I think she was happy for Sarah. Kate’s a little unbalanced at times; I can see it in her signature.
So I had mixed emotions when Donna said Sarah was coming back. I knew there’d be problems. Yet I was relieved for Donna to have another confidant and some help with their parents. When I met Sarah at the airport, she seemed glad enough to see me although a little disappointed that Donna didn’t come. She looked about the same, a little thinner maybe but still attractive, not as pretty as my Donna but handsome in her own way.
I explained her mother’s condition and offered my theory on what caused her illness: lack of calcium, hormonal change, delayed empty-nest syndrome. I didn’t mention that her eldest daughter’s desertion probably accelerated the whole thing. If Sarah was upset, I couldn’t detect it because she kept her head turned, looking out the window most of the trip home.
Something about her at that angle reminded me of her mother, the only time I’d seen much of a resemblance of Sarah to any of the family. They’re smaller, more blond and pixie-like, even Joe. Sarah never seemed to fit the Crawford mold before, but for the first time I could see her mother in her. The way the light played off her cheekbone and down her neck, if I were a painter I’d have a word for
it. An aura of sorts. She reminded me of a melancholy song without lyrics, one in which you feel the singer’s sadness without knowing why. I wondered if Sarah had ever been happy or ever would be.
She has that same expression now, more than a funeral look. Thank God, my Donna’s not like that, but I need to get her out of that awful black dress.
SARAH
Dear God, it’s hot in here. I’d forgotten how they pack in for funerals. Daddy’s so slumped over, nothing in his suit hangs right. It almost looks empty. He’s sobbing like he did at Donna’s wedding. Only worse. He’s not trying to hide it. Aunt Kate is stone-faced. Cried herself out last night. Donna’s pretty as ever, even in black. She has a twin at each hand. Andrew looks like he might conduct the service. I can’t believe Donna’s held up so well, but then she doesn’t have the guilt that I do.
When I got her letter, I felt a sensation I’d shut out for an entire year. Raw, unhomogenized guilt. Like morning sickness, starting in the pit of my stomach then rising up my throat through my nostrils, all hot and burny making me feel like a volcano. Guilt does that to me.
Guilt about Mama almost opened a floodgate for what I’d done to the rest of this family the past year. Especially Jack. Sometimes I’d see his face in my mind, his clear blue eyes all red and puffy as though he’d rolled in oats. But I wouldn’t let myself deal with more than one guilt at a time and Mama is it. I wanted to thank her for everything she’d done for me and apologize for everything I’d done to her. Like the times I disappointed her or made her cry or said I hated her.
It’s so hot. I wish Kate would move over just a little.
When Donna and I were little, it seemed like we were always getting shots for one thing or another. If I felt sick, I’d hide in my room or at Aunt Kate’s house. But Mama would figure it out, find me, and take me to Dr. Sams. “Penicillin,” he’d say, every time. And out would come the hypodermic. Donna didn’t like penicillin shots any better than I did. She simply couldn’t hide anything. And even if we weren’t sick, there’d be a vaccination or booster shot due. Mama wouldn’t tell us until we were almost there. Then she’d take us into the office, one at each hand. Donna would go in sniffling and clinging to Mama’s arm. But I’d hang back, dig my heels in, make Mama pull me through the doorway.