Goodbye To All That (9 page)

More silence. Shocked silence.
Nothing in particular?
“You can’t just end a marriage because of nothing in particular,” Jill said.

“It’s lots of things,” her mother explained, sounding less defensive than thoughtful. “Big things and little things. The remote, for example. He sits in front of the TV with the remote and channel-surfs. Every two seconds, this channel, that channel. Click, click, click. It drives me crazy.”

“Dad,” Melissa whined, “for God’s sake, can’t you stop channel-surfing?”

“I like to channel-surf,” he argued. “You never know, there could be something good on another channel. Anyway, she’s not watching the TV,” he added. “She’s usually reading. What does she care if I channel-surf?”

“You can’t read in another room?” Doug asked Jill’s mother.

“I like my recliner. I like to be comfortable. And he’s going click-click-click. I ask him to stop, but he won’t.”

“I work hard all day, saving lives. In the evening I’m entitled to channel-surf,” Jill’s father declared.

“Okay, so he channel-surfs,” Doug said. “Big fucking deal.”

“Doug,” Jill’s mother scolded.

Doug shrugged an apology. “You don’t break up a marriage over something that trivial.”

“To you it’s trivial. To me it’s a thing that drives me crazy.”

“So you’re going to wear a red smock and work for minimum wage at First-Rate?” Doug faked a contemplative expression. “I think it
has
driven you crazy.”

Jill’s mother refused to back down in the face of his derision. Though Jill opposed the divorce—correction: the separation—she was proud of her mother for standing her ground.

“It’s not just the channel-surfing. That was one example.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. Her nails were short and unpolished, giving her fingers a stubby appearance. If she intended to venture out into the world as a single woman, she ought to get a manicure.

Oh, God. A single woman. Would she be dating? Dating men who weren’t Jill’s father? Where would she meet these men? She wasn’t a bar type. She often lectured Abbie about all the sleazeballs lurking on the internet, so Jill couldn’t imagine her trusting an on-line dating service. And who was she going to meet as a clerk at First-Rate? Sprightly geezers who resented their wives for sending them out on stupid errands to stock up on paper towels or mouthwash when they’d rather be home channel-surfing?

“There’s his beard,” her mother said.

“What beard?” Melissa asked as she, Doug and Jill shifted their gazes to their clean-shaven father.

“He shaves every morning and leaves beard hairs in the sink. Why he can’t rinse them down the drain, I don’t know. I’ve asked him a million times but he leaves this mess for me every morning.”

“Oh, yes, a huge mess,” Jill’s father snapped. “A massive mess. Hours to clean up.” He shook his head. “I’m rushing to get out every morning—unlike some people, I’ve got to get to work by a certain time. I’ve got patients waiting for me, people whose lives I’m trying to save. And I’m supposed to take the time to scrub the sink before I leave. It’s not like you’ve got so much else to do that you can’t wash a few little hairs down the sink.”

“I’ve been scrubbing the sink since the day we got married,” she shot back. “Forty-two years, Richard, and have you ever once said, ‘Thank you for scrubbing the sink’? I’m tired of cleaning up after you. It would take you two seconds to rinse your beard hairs out of the basin, but you won’t do it. Even though I’ve asked. Even though it would make me happy.”

“I do plenty to make you happy!” Jill’s father roared.

“You do things you think would make me happy. You buy me earrings. Earrings are nice, I like earrings fine. But what would
really
make me happy is if you’d clean the sink after yourself. I’ve told you this and you just ignore me.”

Jill closed her eyes and reconsidered her decision not to serve liquor. She could use a drink right now. Diet Coke with rum. Rum with a splash of Diet Coke. Rum, hold the Diet Coke.

Listening to her parents bicker about something so petty yet so intimate made her feel like a voyeur. She eyed her mother’s hands again and wondered if her short nails and the dry white skin of her cuticles reflected all the years she’d spent scrubbing sinks. Jill also tried to remember whether as a child she’d ever thanked her mother for scrubbing the sinks. Or whether anyone in her own family ever thanked her. Gordon left beard hairs in the master bathroom sink all the time, and she always washed them down the drain. She had never thought about that before now. Maybe you had to scrub sinks for forty-two years before it drove you over the edge. Jill had twenty-six years of sink-scrubbing to go before she snapped.

“It’s more than just beard hairs and the remote,” her mother continued.

“It’s the bed,” her father muttered.

Melissa clapped her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear this,” she moaned. “La, la, la, la—”

“The mattress, Melissa,” her mother cut her off. “He wants to rotate the mattress.”

Doug frowned. “You’re supposed to flip the mattress every year or so.”

“Flip it, sure. But we got that pillow-top mattress a few years ago—”

“Almost ten years ago,” her father interrupted. “And it’s never been rotated.”

“Because you’re not supposed to flip it. The pillow-top has to stay on top. So he says he wants to rotate it to even out the wear and tear. His side is getting wear and tear. My side isn’t. He weighs forty pounds more than me.”

“I’m a perfect weight for my height,” Jill’s father pointed out.

“I didn’t say you were fat. I said you weigh forty pounds more than me, which you do. So we’re supposed to rotate this mattress and I get stuck with the worn-out side. My side isn’t worn out. Why should I have to sleep on the side you wore out?”

“Can we move on?” Melissa begged, her hands still clamped to her ears. “Enough with the bed. La, la, la, la
 . . .
”

“All right. Just wait until you’ve been married for forty-two years to someone who weighs forty pounds more than you and he wants to rotate the mattress. That’s all.” Jill’s mother circled the table with her gaze. “I’ve never lived alone in my life. I grew up, I went to college, I met your father. We graduated in May and got married in June. Then we had children. And now, here we still are, side by side, rubbing up against each other all the time. I’ve never been alone in my life.”

“You want to be alone?” Jill’s father asked. “I could leave you alone. Melissa, darling, how much fun is it living alone?”

Melissa shifted in her seat. “I’ve been living alone for years, Dad. And sometimes I love it.” She shifted again, eyeing their mother. “Sometimes it’s lonely,” she warned.

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take. We all have our dreams, right? Well, this is my dream: to do something without first thinking how it’s going to affect someone else. To decide what I want for dinner without thinking, ‘Richard doesn’t like having chicken two nights in a row, so I’d better make lamb chops.’ To go to a movie without thinking, ‘Richard hates subtitles so we can’t see that foreign film.’ To not have to check everyone else’s schedule first. To not have to worry that what I want interferes with what someone else wants.”

“That sounds kind of selfish,” Doug observed.

“Yes. It’s selfish. That’s my dream. For once in my life, I want to be selfish. I want to put myself first.”

“You’re still going to have to scrub the sink,” Jill reminded her. “I assume this apartment you’re moving into has a sink.”

“But I’ll be cleaning up my own messes,” her mother explained. “No one else has ever cleaned up after me. I always clean up after everyone else. It used to be all of you I cleaned up after. Now it’s just him—” she gestured across the table at her husband “—but I’m still cleaning up other people’s messes. No one has ever cleaned my mess out of the sink. Not that I shave, but I spit out toothpaste. And I clean up my spit toothpaste. I’m already cleaning up after myself, so I’ll keep doing that. But no longer will I have to think, ‘I clean up after everyone else and no one cleans up after me.’”

More silence.

Jill avoided her siblings’ faces. She wondered if they were all stewing in guilt the way she was. They should be. They had more reason to feel guilty than she did. She’d cleaned the sink in their shared bathroom when they’d been growing up. Doug couldn’t, of course, because as the oldest he’d always had the most homework. When she’d been in sixth grade and he’d been in eighth, he’d complained that eighth graders had tons more homework than sixth graders so she should clean the bathroom. Once she’d reached eighth grade and had just as much homework as he’d had in that grade, he’d been in tenth grade and still had more homework.

And Melissa had never cleaned the bathroom because she’d been a spoiled little princess.

Jill shouldn’t feel so damned guilty. But she did. She couldn’t recall ever thanking her mother for all the other things she’d done. Mothers were taken for granted. Jill knew that better than anyone else at the table—except, of course, for her mother.

“So, look,” she said quietly. “You’ll live in the apartment for a while, and you’ve always got the option of moving back home. As you said, you and Dad aren’t talking to lawyers. So you’ll live by yourself and clean up your own messes and go to foreign films.”

“You could go to foreign films without moving into an apartment,” Doug noted. “You could go during the day while he’s at work.”

“That’s not the point,” Jill argued. “The point is, she’s tired of the fact that Dad never says, ‘Okay, if you want to see that new French film, we’ll go see it.’”

“Why should he, if he doesn’t like subtitles?”

“They could see a dubbed version,” Melissa suggested.

“I don’t like dubbing,” Jill’s mother announced. “The actors’ lips never match the sounds coming out of their mouths.” She sighed. “We didn’t get together with you kids so you could tell us how to not do what we’re planning to do. We’ve already decided. I’m moving out. Your father is staying in the house. We’re keeping the same cell phone service for now, so you can reach me. I’ll let you know once I’ve got a regular phone.”

“Where is this apartment?” Doug asked.

“Ten minutes from the house. Fifteen if it’s snowing.”

“Overlooking a highway,” Jill’s father muttered. “Like a slum.”

“It’s nothing like a slum,” Jill’s mother protested. “It’s very nice. Clean, secure, ample parking. I’m taking a few pieces of furniture from the house, and I ordered some things at Ikea. It’s a small apartment. I don’t need much.”

“What about the piano?” Jill asked, swallowing the tremor in her voice. Her mother was the only pianist in the family. She’d tried to teach all three children how to play. Each of them, starting at age six, had spent two years working through piano books with names like “I Can Play” and “Beginner’s Song Book” without showing the merest glimmer of talent. Jill’s mother always said they’d inherited her lack of a mere glimmer, that she was at best a mediocre player and that was why she’d majored in music history rather than performance. But she sounded good to Jill. She played not for glory but for her own sweet pleasure.

If she moved the piano to her new apartment, that would seem final, some sort of statement.

“I don’t have room for it in the apartment,” her mother said. “It’s going to stay in the living room for the time being.”

For the time being.
What did that mean?

Jill’s head hurt from thinking too hard and analyzing too much. She could just picture her mother’s new residence: one of those three-story complexes scattered throughout the suburbs where divorced people lived. Usually fathers, wanting to be within reach of their children, who remained with their mothers in their houses.

There was no need for Jill’s mother to move into a divorce village. The house was big enough that her mother and father could share it and manage to avoid each other. They could even sleep in separate bedrooms. One of them could eat in the kitchen and one in the dining room. They could divide the refrigerator right down the middle.