Ordinary Love and Good Will (7 page)

I ceased being surprised at what people are capable of, ceased longing for Pat’s explanation, or Ed’s, or even the opportunity to say one last thing, reach one last understanding. And Pat’s passion ended. It got increasingly convenient for him to let me have more of the children. Joe, whiny then, shy and hard to please, lived with me most of the time. Daniel went through a period of bad behavior—low grades, smoking marijuana, drinking and driving—and was shipped to me in a hurry. Annie spent her sullen stages at my house. With Ellen, Pat was locked in battle. When she made herself horrible enough, he sent her to me. Michael was the prize, Pat’s favorite boy. For years he almost never came, and then it was only the accident and Pat’s burgeoning new family that made it possible. As for separating identical twins, he considered that a positive good, and supported his position with statistics about test scores and theories about brain development. His intention, he said, was to overcome for them the disadvantage of having been born twins, and, furthermore, it was Joe, smaller by a pound at birth, always subordinate and dependent, who would benefit the most from leading his own life. He dismissed my arguments that Joe needed Michael, missed him, yearned for him.

I took what I could get, knowing that, according to the custody agreement, the choice was his. Tatty had babies. I dated Simon Elliott. One by one, the children went to college and graduated and got jobs and mates and even children, and we all got to the point where our ancient agitations were unrecognizable even to ourselves. And unrecognizable, too, my passion for Ed Stackhouse, what his austere little house and travel tales aroused in me. Above his kitchen table was a map of the world, and it was covered with pins,
designating places he had visited. Now that I can hardly remember what he looked like or what his bed was like, I’m sure that what I really wanted was not to love him but to be him.

It is nearly midnight when I come down to turn on the hall light. The ground floor is dark—Joe would have thriftily turned out the lights upon leaving—and I don’t bother to turn them on when I go into the dining room and the kitchen to open a few windows to the evening breeze. A dark shape dozing at one end of the couch, I realize before I have the sense to grow afraid, is Ellen. Her head lies back, exposing her neck, and her breathing ruffles with a low snore. All the windows in the room are up, and magazine covers have blown open, papers have slid from my desk to the carpeting. I’m annoyed enough to consider touching her naked throat and startling her, but she is too quick for me. She says, “What time is it?” sits up, and stretches.

“I didn’t know you were here.”

“All the lights were off. I figured you had gone out with Joe and Michael. I did call up the stairs. What were you doing up there?” Her tone is immediately challenging.

“Knitting. Reading. Listening to music.”

“The stereo down here is better. You’ve got this whole big house—”

“Which means that I can sit in my room sometimes.”

“The doors were wide open. Anyone could—”

“Is the front door unlocked? And the side door, too? I told Joe—”

“Well—”

“Well?”

“Well, actually, I came in the back, after trying the other doors. Didn’t you hear the Malones’ dogs barking in their pen?”

“No, and I didn’t hear the doorbell ring, either.”

She ignores this, reaches for the lamp behind her. Its glow reveals that, though her hair is combed, her face is a little puffy. Sweatshirt, no shoes. She says, “Want some ice cream?” and goes into the kitchen.

There is something to be made of this, but I am not going to be the one to make it. Ellen’s unannounced appearance in my house is nothing remarkable, even this late at night, so I am not going to remark upon other signs. On her way to the kitchen, she flips every light switch she passes, a habit she has always had that I suppose is like my own feeling that lots of unused rooms are welcoming. She likes the most distant corners to be ready for her.

She brings back the canister of berry-berry ice cream and two spoons, already diving in, saying with her mouth full, “Mmm. This is good, Mom. You must have made it for your picnic.” There will be more to this. There is. “I bet it was nice, huh.”

“Same as always. That’s a nice spot.”

“Too bad you couldn’t have had a larger group.”

I lick my lips, hiding a tiny smile, then say, “I’m not sure Michael is up to larger groups.”

“Why is everyone acting like this trip is some long illness that he’s recuperating from? How are they getting along, anyway?”

“Fine, I think. They went out with Kevin and Barbara.”

“The senator and his wife?”

“The very same.”

“Feel a little left out?” She catches my gaze over the rim of the ice cream canister and holds it. I cock my head, a type of shrug. She grins happily and sits down, lifts her feet to the edge of the coffee table. She says, conversational now rather than needling, “Jennifer is spending the night.”

“You finally gave in, then.”

“She is so literal-minded. All day long Diane just stood
back and watched while Jennifer asked questions. What time is bedtime at your house, Ellen? Is that go-upstairs time, or lights-out time, or go-to-sleep time? Can I get up to go to the bathroom if I want to? Can I get a drink, or should I call you? Is there a glass for me in the bathroom? Where is it?”

I chuckle.

“I looked at her when I was tucking her in, and I thought, Joe would say this is the real thing, so I said, ‘Do you want a kiss good night, Jennifer?’ and she said, ‘Do you mean on the lips or on the cheek?’ Diane is in love.”

I put my feet up on the coffee table and reach a spoon into the ice cream. So. Okay. I am lucky that there is always this comfort to come back to, this incidental bumping on the couch of mother and daughter, this expectation of conversation like silk running through your hands. I admit I am often amused and sometimes annoyed at Ellen’s rudeness, but this is what she is aiming for, this rare comfort between mother and daughter. It might be that we would not have had it had our history been more conventional. As a child she was disputatious and resolute, with a will to have the last word that sometimes bordered on the self-destructive. After Pat brought the children back from England, Ellen embarked upon her mythic wars against his tyranny. At the same time he was fighting me in court for full custody and had twice moved the children secretly so that I couldn’t get in touch with them, Ellen hounded and disobeyed him so relentlessly that she won herself pretty free access to me, and when he moved away to Chicago, a year before the accident, she moved in with me and Joe. I was the spoils of war, and she cherished me accordingly. I felt the same about her, I have to admit. She enjoyed the added conviction that the war had been hers and she had won it; I was grateful for my good luck. Her years with me were delightful—no fights, no teen-age resentment—
but I have since thought that she trained herself for a different life from the one she has chosen, and that she has never quite figured out how to beat her swords into plowshares. But I don’t know. The little girl I remember? When she was four, she insisted that she never slept. When I doubted her about it, she spent a month calling to me at all hours of the night, announcing what time it was and declaring that she was wide awake.

I try to accept the mystery of my children, of the inexplicable ways they diverge from parental expectations, of how, however much you know or remember of them, they don’t quite add up.

Sunday morning I am dressed and rummaging through the pantry as the eastern windows begin to lighten, and I see that it is going to be another lovely morning, hot afternoon. The long grass lies over, gray with moisture. I decide to go out and pick some marigolds for the kitchen table, and my sneakers leave dark tracks in the dew. The Malones cut their lawn yesterday, as every Saturday—there is still a sweet grassy smell lingering in the air, and the marigolds, as I bend down to cut them, give off an intense odor—sweet-acrid—that some people hate but that I love. In Nebraska, of course, my mother’s farm garden was huge and important—rows of cabbages and tomatoes and potatoes and brussels sprouts and turnips, but all of them separated by thick lines of orange and brown marigolds or brightly colored nasturtiums. I press the cushiony little blossoms to my face. Behind me—I don’t have to turn and look, I know what is there—my house is full of sleep.

Well, the fact is that I have been a mother for thirty years, now, half again longer than I was a child, and the last thirty years have given me as many habits and predilections as my childhood did. The bodies in the house, whose presence
comforts me, are the bodies of my children, not my mother and father. What comforts me is not my own safety anymore, but theirs.

I have learned, over the last twenty years, to embrace the possible and not to mourn the rest. I don’t often think, as I did last night, of those little five-and-a-half-year-old boys, climbing so trustfully into the back seat of the blue Pontiac. Michael in blue shorts and white T-shirt, carrying a toy metal cement mixer, a crescent-shaped scab on his knee, Joe in khaki shorts and green striped T-shirt, a pad of paper and a short pencil sticking out of his pocket. Even as I turn my attention to Pat, I hear Michael say, “17 plus 27,” and Joe reply, at once, “44.” Joe looks at Michael and smiles, Michael looks at me, attentive, knowing that there is something wrong with me. But that thick, solid world still surrounds them. Their bodies move confidently, expressing the knowledge that the back seat is theirs, the Pontiac is theirs, the house and the yard and the mom and the dad are theirs. They fidget and settle, ready to get started, and, without a backward glance, they are driven into the unknowable future.

I look toward the house. Long shafts of light blaze up the yellow siding, casting the black shadows of the chestnut trees against the porch; the screen door swings slowly on its hinges; squirrels jump from roof to tree limb then run headlong at the ground. The dew evaporates in the rising sun. Right now they are safe here, in my house, taking, as they think, care of me. Isn’t that a picture to set beside the other one, a picture of survival next to a picture of betrayal? Don’t they cancel each other out? My pleasure in this morning, this ordinary beauty, prods me to think they do.

It must be about eight-thirty when Joe comes down, dressed, Bertrand Russell in his hand. As always, he goes straight to the coffee machine, prepares and downs his first
half-cup, smacks his lips over it. “Hi, Mom,” he says, affectionately.

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Didn’t get in too late, Mom.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Okay, I guess. Yeah, it was okay.” He stirs his coffee, resting his head in his hand. Oh, he is so moody. He says, “I don’t think Michael had a very good time. I feel responsible for that.”

“Why?”

“Well, going out was my idea. It’s no big deal.” He picks up the shredded-wheat box and pours some into his bowl. I put the milk on the table, then go back to pouring cake batter into the layer tins.

“I mean,” Joe goes on, “he sounds like he has tuberculosis or something. You should hear him up in the bathroom. I’ve never heard such coughing and throat-clearing in my whole life. I peeked in. I could swear I saw him inhale water out of his hands into his nose and then spit it into the sink. Mom, I don’t think I know this guy.”

“He does seem to be coughing a lot.”

“Last night the pianist was having a break, and Barbara started talking about her dog-training class, and it was pretty funny, and Kevin and I were laughing—you know how Barbara tells a story; she can make growing tomatoes on her front porch sound like a three-ring circus. Anyway, Kevin and I were cracking up, and I looked over at Michael and he was smiling, I mean, his smile was at the table but he wasn’t. And right when I was watching, he got farther away, like he couldn’t bear us or something. And I caught myself thinking, Training dogs? Children are starving! All that crap.”

“He must be pretty tired.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He gets up and pours himself
another cup of coffee. A few minutes later, Michael comes in, dressed in jeans and a shirt, barefoot. “Hi, Mom,” he says, warmly.

“Sleep?” I say.

“Pretty good, for a mere eight hours.” He sets a large round pink object on the table beside his plate. Joe looks at it, too. We exchange a glance. Michael runs himself a glass of water, then sits down and puts this pink object in his mouth. With some water and a visible gulp, he swallows it. Joe says, “Good Lord, what’s that?” I put the cakes in the oven.

“Chloroquine. Quinine. Malaria, you know.”

“You have malaria?”

“Maybe. At any rate, I have to take this pill every Sunday. ‘Instead of church’—that’s what the Indian doctors always say.”

“What are you taking for the tuberculosis?”

“Tuberculosis?”

“All that coughing and throat-clearing in the bathroom.”

“Oh. What? Oh, that. That’s just a habit. India is so dusty that your throat gets hypersensitive to phlegm. It goes away, I hear. Hey, Joe. Don’t worry about me, all right?”

“How about this. I won’t talk about it.”

“Mom can worry about me. She owes me for all those letters she didn’t write. Shit, I am so jet-lagged.”

“You should have said something before we went out last night.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t seem to have a good time.”

“I didn’t have a good time, but I had a good enough time. I’m glad we went out. Barbara and Kevin seem happy with each other.”

“It was a nice wedding,” I say.

“I would like that, I think,” says Michael, “being married to somebody I’d known since seventh grade. Or maybe
falling in love with someone in seventh grade, and then having her grow up pretty, and shorter than me, and smart, and funny, too. You’d never have to fall in love again. In India you don’t have to fall in love at all.” Two bowls of shredded wheat, a hard-boiled egg, two pieces of toast, a glass of orange juice. He pushes himself away from the table. “Show me the lawnmower.” Joe follows him out.

I suppose it is still my privilege to rummage in their rooms for dirty clothes, but I must say that I pause before doing it. Joe has left some shirts and underwear by the door of his room, and I pick up those, but when I go into Michael’s room, I don’t know where to begin. The bags he has brought—a knapsack and a duffel—have been emptied on the carpeting, a swath of unfamiliar, filmy items, all crumpled. There is a small pile of what look like tiny cigars, each tied with a red thread. There are pairs of sandals, some colorful pictures on parchmentlike paper, some books, a pile of blue air letters. The visible ones carry Joe’s handwriting. I go to the window and open it, intending to ask what I can wash, and I see them in the driveway in front of the garage, squatting over the lawnmower. The tools are arranged in a neat row behind them. As I watch, Joe lifts out the motor and they turn. Joe puts it down on a piece of newspaper, and they stare at it for a long time. Finally, Michael points at something, and a moment later, Joe chooses a tool and applies it to the motor. After that, it is beguiling to watch how they cooperate, with nods and exchanged glances and passing of tools and laughter. I turn and leave Michael’s room, stepping over the clothes.