by Mary Morony
My father’s voice bellowed so loud I was sure the neighbors could hear it. “Jesus, Ginny! If someone poisoned our dog it didn’t have anything to do with the shopping center. Maybe if you paid attention to something other than yourself, you’d realize that.” I didn’t hear my mother respond. I wondered if she was crying. Then I heard Daddy say, “Go on and get dressed. We gotta hurry up and get to this damn party so we can leave and get home.”
She sighed so loudly I could hear it. “If you say so, but you know you always have fun once you get there. Don’t be so silly.” Things went quiet. Then, just after she asked him to zip her dress, she said, “Honey, another thing: please don’t talk about the shopping center. I’d like to have just one nice evening without listening to a debate about ‘progress’”
“Stop, goddamn it, Ginny, not another goddamn word,” he bellowed.
I turned over and pulled my pillow over my head.
The next morning during breakfast, Daddy wasn’t at the dining room table. I thought he must still be in bed, which was something that never happened except when they’d been to parties the night before. As usual, my mother reigned at the head of the table, drinking coffee and her fresh squeezed orange juice. There wasn’t another person in the world who could make such a big deal about fresh squeezed orange juice.
In the kitchen Ethel fixed a plate of poached eggs and toast and took it to my mother. “Tell the girls and Gordy to hurry up and get ready,” I heard her say. “I’m driving them to school this morning.”
Ethel relayed the message when she returned to the kitchen. Stuart groaned loudly. “They tied a big one on last night,” she said. “Did you hear ‘em?”
She slumped at the table, spooning cornflakes into her face as if she were shoveling sand into a bucket. Then her spoon clattered against the bowl. We heard my mother going upstairs to her room.
“I hate her,” Stuart said. “She’s so mean to him. I wish he would leave her for good and take me with him.”
Ethel shot back, “Ya know you don’ mean that, an’ don’ be callin’ yo’ mother ‘she,’ hear me? Miz Ginny deserve respect.”
“Why would that be? Because she hatched out a bunch of brats? ‘Cause all she knows how to do is screw?” Stuart sneered.
Gordy, Helen, and I exchanged shocked looks. I couldn’t imagine anyone talking to Ethel like that. I hunkered close to the table in case the fur really began to fly.
Ethel just stood there, eyes bulging. Then her mouth set firm. “You best be watchin’ ya mouth, young lady,” she thundered. “You ain’t too big that I can’t turn you over my knee still.”
“Go ahead and try,” Stuart said. “I’m so afraid. Hurry up, you guys. I don’t want to be late for school.”
Then she turned on me. “Stop sniveling, you little brat. Just shut up.”
“I didn’t…”
She slammed out of the kitchen.
Ethel let out a long, slow sigh and gave me a pat. “Don’ pay her no min’, honey,” she said. “Stuart jus’ done got up on tha wrong side of the bed this mornin’.”
Under his breath Gordy added, “And every other morning her whole life.” Then he said, “Ethel?”
“What you want, darlin’?”
“I was just wonderin’…They aren’t gonna get a divorce, are they?”
“Where you hear such a thang? Ain’t no cause fo’ you…”
“Gordy, Sallee, hurry up,” my mother called as she went out the front door.
In the car she seemed as jovial as Daddy usually was. She even started to sing about the bear going over the mountain. Stuart had gotten in the back seat, so Gordy had to sit up front. As we started down the driveway, Stuart said, “Would you please spare us the show?”
Time slowed and every sound amplified. I held my breath, afraid to disturb the air. No one said a word for two long, painful blocks. Then my mother casually asked, “Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed, dear?” From her tone I thought it might be safe to breathe again; but catching a glimpse of her face, I knew otherwise. I cut a sideways glance at Gordy. He too was frozen in fear, staring straight ahead, zombie like.
“Why are you so mean?” Stuart cried. “I heard him leave last night.”
I did a mental inventory of the driveway. We were in Daddy’s car. I hadn’t noticed if hers was there when we left.
“I heard you screaming at him that you had his keys.” Stuart was growing hysterical. She began to sob. “How can you be so, so hateful? Is everything just a show to you?”
Chapter 12
The last party I remember my mother having was on a cold, crisp Saturday a few weeks shy of Christmas. The trees in the yard were barren, but garlands and decorations brightened the house. My mother had decided to have just a few friends over for a holiday luncheon. As always, she was serving the yummiest things: tiny sandwiches cut into pretty shapes, aspic, cheese soufflé, and Waldorf salad with apples, raisins, and nuts.
Gordy, Helen, and I perched like so many birds in my hemlock tree by the driveway, chattering to each other as we watched the ladies arrive in their pretty hats and fur coats. As they bustled to the house, we giggled from the tree branches, hidden from sight.
“Gosh, I hope she doesn’t hit the tree,” Gordy hissed, throwing his hands up to protect his head in mock despair as one of the ladies maneuvered her huge Cadillac around the other cars in the drive. Every time she put on the brakes, Gordy would emit an errch and then zroom when she’d start forward again. Helen and I held on to the branch above us to keep from falling as we snorted and laughed, trying not to be heard. It felt good to laugh. There hadn’t been much to laugh about in a long time.
“It’s cold out here; let’s get something to eat,” Helen offered, just as the kitchen door opened. Ethel stuck her head out and gave one of her earsplitting hollers to summon us.
“Ya’ll get in here now. I gots to get ya cleaned up and fed before I can serve lunch!” No sooner had Ethel finished her complaint than we were racing each other up the back steps. Gordy errched and vroomed as he steered his pretend car every which way but straight while Helen and I laughed until tears ran down out cheeks.
“Ya’ll stop actin’ the fool and wash up,” Ethel snapped. “I laid yo’ clothes out on yo’ beds. I want ya’ll to eat this here lunch and go’ne upstairs and put ‘em on when you finished eatin’. I ain’t gots time to be tellin’ ya’ll twice, ya hear?” Gordy and I both saw Ethel’s green splatter-ware cup in the kitchen sink. We looked at each other and our laughter stopped.
We knew better than to get crosswise with Ethel when she was drinking. So we sat right down at the table, ate our lunch, and left the kitchen without a word. Upstairs, as we changed into the clean clothes Ethel had lain out, Helen stomped her foot. “I hate it when she drinks,” she said. “Don’t you?”
No matter the occasion, my mother always looked dressed up to me. Her shoes and purses matched, and routinely she wore gloves. But somehow I was always surprised at how pretty she looked at her parties, this one in particular. I’d heard her complain to Ethel before guests began to arrive that in her condition she felt that she looked as big as a house. To me she looked beautiful. Her new maternity dress was navy blue with white polka dots. The shoes she wore were matching navy blue, with very high heels. They had little holes in them like my father’s business shoes.
I felt so much more grown up now than I had the year before. Then, I would’ve much rather gone to bed without dinner than to make an appearance at one of my mother’s parties or luncheons. Now I’d come to the surprising conclusion that some of my mother’s friends could be fun. They asked me questions and seemed to want to know the answers. As I helped Ethel pass hors d’oeuvres, I chatted with the guests. I discovered that I loved the attention I was getting. I could retreat behind the big serving plate, so I didn’t have to worry about introductions or what to say afterward. In an attempt to stretch my social skills, I mentioned that I had seen a redheaded peckerwood that morning to a lady wh
o’d commented on how many birds she had at her feeder lately. Everyone laughed. I thought I was so clever until my mother corrected me, patting me on the head, “That is a redheaded woodpecker, sweetie.” She turned to her friends. “It’s a fulltime job keeping the children from sounding like Ethel,” she said. “She makes me laugh, but honestly, I don’t want my children talking like that. What did she say the other day that was so funny…?” Stuart rolled her eyes at my mother. I looked around to see if Ethel was anywhere within earshot. I didn’t see her and sighed with relief. My face was burning with the embarrassment of having been corrected in front of everyone.
Our house looked as pretty as my mother: it was full of cheer, flickering candles, and a glittering Christmas tree. It was as if the house was wearing party clothes, too. The crystal, silver, and wood polished to a high shine for the special day added to the magic. Ethel was dressed up as well. Her usual light blue or gray uniform with white collar, white cuffs, and a big white apron was replaced with a black uniform with no apron at all. She looked formal and distant to me. Although it had come a little loose from her nipping at the gin, her hair was fixed in a single large bun at the nape of her neck instead of the four small buns she usually wore that made her head look square. As she bent to serve them, the ladies seated at a table greeted her as an old friend. I overheard someone say to my mother, “You’re so lucky to have Ethel. Good help just doesn’t come along like that, you know.”
“Ethel and I wouldn’t know what to do without each other,” my mother responded. “We’ve been together since before Joe and I were married.” At the mention of Daddy’s name, I thought the room went a little quiet.
Gordy, Helen, and I usually would sneak back to the kitchen to sample a few treats, but we didn’t want to spend much time there and risk Ethel’s temper. But, like always, we knew that if we seemed to be spending too much time around her friends, my mother would give Ethel the glare and we’d all be hauled out of sight into the kitchen. So we huddled in a corner of the dining room trying our best to be as unobtrusive as possible.
“They’re going to eat in a minute. What do you want to do?” I asked. “I don’t want to go to the kitchen.”
Helen shrugged.
Gordy seethed. “If I see her sneak that bag out of the cabinet again, I might just hit her,” he said. Finally, as the guests were being seated in the dining room and Ethel started to serve them, we crept into the kitchen. We snacked from hors d’oeuvres trays and kept out of the way whenever Ethel came back for anything she needed.
When the luncheon was over, the day lost its luster as if it were something my mother’s friends brought along with them to the party and then gathered up with their other belongings as they left. Ethel didn’t make it into work the day after. It wasn’t all that unusual. Parties had a way of doing that to her.
That Christmas season was a strange one. Daddy moved home again for the holidays, and it was just like old times. I think he and my mother made an effort not to fight. Things were going pretty well, and then, just before Christmas day, our new puppy was run over by a car and my mother fell apart. She started crying a lot. You would’ve thought it was one of us who’d been killed. It was a sad thing. I cried a little, but not as much as when Lance died. I don’t think my mother shed a tear about old Lance, but for that puppy we’d had for little more than a month, she wailed like Lassie had died. She’d stand in her bedroom and look out the window at the corner where the dog got hit and cry and cry. Ethel blamed it on her pregnancy. She said pregnant women cry a lot. But the day after New Year’s we learned the real reason. Daddy had packed up all his things and put them in his car. Then he called us into the living room and told us he was leaving. This time he wouldn’t be moving home again. He and my mother were getting a divorce.
Gordy stood up like a soldier called to attention. “You’re getting a divorce?” he shouted, “And you’re leaving us here, just like that? Leaving?” He glared at my father who looked away.
Helen and I were crying. I didn’t know what to think or to say, though I was very proud of Gordy. I wished I could be so brave. I wanted to go to Daddy and beg him not to leave, or if he had to, at least to take me with him. Then I looked at my mother. She was sitting all bunched up in the sofa like a wad of Kleenex, sobbing and blowing her nose. Somehow I felt it wouldn’t be right to hurt her more, so I didn’t say anything. Stuart came into the living room and said she was ready to go.
Helen and I ran from the room. Peering out our bedroom window, we watched Daddy and Stuart drive down the driveway and out of our lives. We collapsed into each other’s arms, sobbing.
I assumed that when grown-ups decided to get a divorce it just happened, but I soon learned that it takes a lot of preparation. There were lawyers to hire and court dates to schedule and decisions to make. The whole time we children drifted around the house like ghosts. The lawyers soon made Stuart come back home to my mother. During the months leading up to the hearing, my mother stayed home more than she used to. She trailed after Ethel, not unlike I used to do. I missed my visits with Ethel and sometimes felt a little jealous of my mother for taking up so much of her time. It seemed to me that the mere act of breathing had a way of making my mother mad. I crept around her as if she were a snake ready to strike. Anything could set her off.
“Hey, Gordy. You done your homework yet?” I asked one afternoon in early March hoping to entice him into a game of basketball. Gordy was sitting at the kitchen table struggling over his arithmetic. He was counting on his fingers and mumbling to himself.
“Miz Jones says you’re not s’posed to count on your fingers,” I helpfully informed him.
“Stop being so impudent, young lady,” my mother snapped, appearing from behind me. I didn’t know what impudent meant, and I was afraid to ask since I got yelled at for almost anything those days. I stole out of the kitchen.
When my mother did leave the house it was usually to run errands. There were no more luncheons or foxhunts or bridge club meetings to go to. When Daddy left, so did the fun. Besides shopping for clothes, the only place my mother went was the grocery store. She’d come home with the car full of groceries and we would all have to help Ethel carry them in. My mother would say to Ethel, “Something told me to buy this.”
And Ethel would say, “I thought ‘bout that jest after you drove ‘way.” All of a sudden, it was like Ethel wasn’t just someone my mother paid to take care of us; she was my mother’s best friend. I guess I should have been happy about that, but the truth was it about made me sick.
They’d chuckle about how they had such a close connection, that all one had to do was to think of something and the other would know it. I didn’t think that was true though, because Ethel said lots of things to me that I didn’t think my mother would have liked if she knew; like Daddy’s talks with Ethel. I bet my mother didn’t know anything about those, because if she did, we would’ve all heard about it.
After Daddy left, my mother started putting us children to bed. When she’d have us say our prayers, she would tell us, “Ask God to make Daddy come home.” I would, but I always felt sort of dirty afterward, like I’d asked God for something I didn’t want. After my mother switched off the light and left the room, Helen and I would whisper about how maybe Daddy should stay where he was. Maybe he was happier there.
If marriage no longer provided structure my mother could count on, social graces still could. There were absolutes at my mother’s dining room table: linen, silver, crystal, and china, no matter the meal. When the divorce settlement was finally reached, my mother took some of the money she received and rounded up her silver so that she had a complete service for twelve—luncheon and dinner. Even at nine years old, I thought it was a queer thing, but she seemed so proud of it. I remember her telling me that we would each inherit three full place settings.
Until Daddy left home, I hadn’t fully realized how fortunate I was to be a “little kid.” Gordy, Helen, and I were allowed to take our meals in the k
itchen, but Stuart had to eat in the dining room with my mother. Stuart had been proud of her grown-up status before, but now she hated it. She was expected to sit up straight, hold her fork just so, and converse like a lady. She was allowed to leave the table only after asking to be excused—there were lots and lots of rules. When Stuart started to put on weight, my mother picked at her about it all the time. There seemed to be an argument between them at dinner every night. Usually one, or sometimes both of them, would leave the table in tears. Afterward, I’d help Ethel clear the table. She’d shake her head slowly and say, “Lord, chile, I jest don’ know what ta think.” I didn’t either.
At breakfast my mother sat at the head of the table, reigning like a queen, as though Daddy were still around. Smelling faintly of face powder, Chanel No. 5, and lipstick, she would read the morning paper over a second cup of coffee while she waited for us to get ready for school. Her breakfast of poached eggs and bacon with one slice of toast and strawberry jam that Ethel had prepared for her was finished and cleared. With her reading glasses perched on her nose, she’d peruse the paper. Though she read two papers a day, whatever she read never seemed to have much effect on her—or at least not like it had on Daddy. He held some strong views on the way things in government should be and a discussion about them could get pretty lively.
I don’t remember hearing my mother interject a single word into any of those discussions. Nor did I hear her have discussions with her friends that related to the news of the day unless it was about something sensational—like when an acquaintance of my mother’s was arrested for embezzlement. I heard her talking on the phone with a friend one day. Her voice was excited, her fingers winding and unwinding the phone cord as she spoke. “I heard the sheriff came straight to his house and took him away in handcuffs,” she said. “Can you believe that? I’m surprised that Bernard would have allowed such high handedness. He must be coming up for reelection.”