The Good Life (17 page)

“You know,” she said, “Doris Dilworth started going to daily mass when she began her diet last year, and she was finally able to lose the weight and keep it off. Isn't that interesting? You could use a story like that in your book.”

“That is interesting. Now I've got a suggestion for you. Next time you're checking in with God and asking for graces, try asking for the grace to know when to shut the fuck up,” I said, and took the stairs two at a time—good exercise for the thighs.

 

Jon wasn't home when I called, and he wasn't home half an hour later. Grimly, I settled in for a siege, picking up the phone every twenty minutes. He would have to answer eventually. He and his wife were staying home for the holidays, taking the chance to spend time with their sons. I used his private number, which rang only in his home office. All afternoon and into the evening it rang.

At intervals I went downstairs to snack. Neighbors had been dropping by with cookies and fruitcake; the kitchen counter was crowded with fancy plates, and Mom held court in the living room. Once I ran into my father, who said, “You've been slaving away ever since you got here. What say I go out and pick up some Mexican tonight?” I shrugged, nodded. If he opened the refrigerator, he would find enough leftovers piled up to see us into the new year.

I didn't get Jon until after eleven—after one, Chicago time. “I've been trying to reach you all day,” I said when he picked up the phone.

“I keep restricted hours during the holidays,” he said loudly enough that anyone in a nearby room could have heard him.

“How nice. Around here it's cruise missiles.”

“What good is all your hard work if you don't hold tight under fire? Remember everything you've worked for.”

“Families aren't supposed to be battlegrounds,” I spat.

“We grow up with myths. The first thing to do is put them aside,” he said, and then, more softly, “At least you ought to be getting some good material.”

“As a matter of fact, I'm not,” I said. “My parents have staged a battle to the death and my mother has bullied me into daily mass.”

“She can't make you do anything,” he said, and I thought that finally he'd said something my mother would agree with. Even in my irritation, I was swayed by the heavy, creamy fall of his voice. “You're the only one responsible for your decisions.”

“Listen, I got them to stop carping at each other for two minutes.”

“Holidays. They should give out operator's licenses,” he said. A moment's silence shimmered between us, a rare thing. “Is there anyone there you can talk to?”

“Jon, I'm talking to you.”

“When you're in a bottom, you need lots of support.”

“Good. Support me. Did you tell your wife about the apartment?”

“All important decisions should be put off until after New Year's.”

The glittering silence descended again, and I pictured the lines of telephone wire shivering between us. “Look,” I said. “I'm having a hard time. Things here are terrible. I need to know that you miss me.”

“Of course I do.”

“Try sounding like you mean it.”

“I do. Of course. But remember,” he said, “some needs can't be filled by another person.” I could hear the wheels of his desk chair rolling over the floor, and I pictured a woman standing in the doorway of his office.

“Thanks, Jon. Good support. I'll be sure to call again,” I said.

“It'll be easier when you come home. You'll remember who you really are. You'll reclaim your new life.”

“If my old life lets me,” I said.

 

I groped down the stairs the next morning at quarter to six, stuffing my shirt into my pants. Mom always put on a skirt to go to church, but if God was expecting me this early, He could accustom His all-seeing eyes to pants. Which, too tight, hurt.

Dad was already in the kitchen, dressed and glaring at the front page. “I didn't think you were going,” I said.

“Once you gave in, I didn't have any choice.” He sighed. “What the hell. Let's go out to the Belgian waffle place afterwards. Salvage something out of this.”

“What about Mom?” I said.

“I walked her to the bathroom at two, three, four-thirty, and five-thirty-seven. If she's not dry as the Sahara, she can hold it.” He fished in his pocket and tossed me the car keys. His night vision had gotten dicey, and the sky was still licorice black. “Let's go.”

We didn't talk at all on the drive over and had to grope our way into the tiny chapel where daily mass was held. A dozen women were already yawning and waiting in sweatsuits and stretch pants, none of them under sixty. They swung their heads up together like deer when we slipped in; Dad and I took the folding chairs by the door. Everyone was close enough to touch.

When the priest walked in without any fanfare, the women rustled to their feet, and he smiled at them with sweet generosity. “Let's begin,” he murmured. The women pitched into prayer with wonderful precision, none of them even bothering to glance at the missalettes. I tried to imagine coming here every morning in the dark, reciting prayers by heart, and then going home to make breakfast. It felt utterly peculiar.

“What do you make of that?” I asked Dad when we were back out in the chilly black air.

“I managed to nod off twice, which is about as much rest as I get sleeping with your mother these days.”

“Don't tell her that. She'll count it as a victory.”

When we got to the car, I turned up both the heat and the radio, and we sang along to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” all the way to the restaurant. A waitress with eyes that looked as if they'd been set in with a wood-burning kit seated us. Dad glanced at the menu, put it aside, and cleared his throat while I was looking at the strawberry waffles. He fiddled with his napkin, folding it into a little pup tent next to his fork until I looked up again.

“You know, you're going to have to talk to your mother,” he said.

“I'll pay attention to the sermon tomorrow. I'll take notes.”

“Not that,” he said. “You were pretty hard on her yesterday. She takes these things to heart.”

“She's got to learn to back off.”

Dad smiled unhappily and picked up his spoon, trying to catch his reflection in its bowl. “She doesn't realize sometimes. She loses track. But honey, she cried all night.”

“Shit.” I closed my eyes. “I lost my temper. I'm not perfect.” I looked up to see him nodding, and my anger started to swell again. “We do everything she wants. You say so yourself. Why else are we going to church in the middle of the night?”

“You don't get it, Trace. You'll be gone in a week. When James told her not to come out after his babies were born, she cried like her heart was breaking. There's nothing in your life that matters as much as you do to her.”

“So who are you trying to help here? You want me to go do a case study on her dieting friend to get her off your back?”

“She thinks you'd be happier if you were thinner. You
are
pretty big, honey.”

I folded the menu closed and shook out my napkin so it had no wrinkles. My stomach growled. I knew I had the words to respond to him. I had a whole speech. But the speech had drifted away, and there was only a table separating me from my father. It wasn't enough.

“Displacement?” I said. That didn't sound right.

“Not funny, Tracy.”

“I'm not trying to be funny.”

“I don't need your psychoanalysis,” he said sharply.

“We're a long way from the couch. I'm just wondering what it means when a father avoids his wife by trying to win over his daughter.”

He flattened his hand on the table. “We play on the same team, Tracy. Don't condescend to me.”

“Don't intrude on my life.”

“I'm so far from intruding on you, I can barely even see you,” he said. “If I was going to start intruding, I might take your telephone away. I might ask why you're the one doing the calling, and why you don't mention his name to your mother, who would like to know. I could lock up the sugar and butter and feed you lettuce.”

“I'll be happy to make salads for you in the future. Better yet, I'll hand over the lettuce. You can make dinner to your own exacting standards.”

The blank-eyed waitress materialized next to us and stood, tapping her order pad. “Just coffee,” Dad said, glancing at her. “I can't eat this early.”

I opened the menu and pointed to a photo of three waffles mortared by thick layers of whipped cream with blueberries. “That,” I said. “And coffee.” The air in the restaurant was warm, full of low laughter and the scrape of cutlery on heavy plates. I was so hungry, the images wobbled before me.

“That ought to help things,” Dad said after the waitress turned away. “Good choice.”

“We came to a waffle restaurant. I ordered waffles.”

“Nothing I say makes any difference to you, does it?”

“I'm an adult. I have to make my own decisions.”

“You make some piss-poor ones.”

“Impressive talk from a man who's spent fifty years arguing with his wife.”

Dad leaned across the table. “Your mother and I live in the same house with each other. We aren't pretending, or hiding anything.”

“No,” I said. “Nothing except all the things you can't wait to say to me.”

Dad stood up. “You know what your mother says? She says evil takes good and makes it look bad. I
know
you, no matter what you think.” He spun around and walked out. When the waitress came back, I nodded at his place, as if he were going to return in a minute, and I went ahead and ate my breakfast. Even though the berries were lost in the gummy syrup and the coffee was faintly burned, I ate every scrap and wiped the plate to get the juice, and when I finished my cup of coffee, I drank Dad's.

***

Tiptoeing into the chapel by myself the next morning, I still felt clumsy and shy, but the chair by the door was open and the quiet warmth of the room was comforting. I had joined my parents for TV the night before, apologizing to Mom at the first station break. They nodded, and I went up early to bed. When I left, I heard my mother sigh.

I folded my hands now and watched the faces around me, which were uniformly peaceful, as if bread were on the rise in every one of their kitchens. I couldn't imagine my mother wearing such a look. Patrick used to do imitations called “Mom at mass”: preoccupied, muttering, ticking off mysterious lists on his fingers, while James and I roared.

The side door opened and I looked up to see an ancient woman supported by a walker, wearing the shapeless polyester skirt and crepe-soled shoes of a nun. Two women near the door bounced up and guided her to a chair, one on each side, smiling and murmuring. They looked as if they had done this many, many times, waiting until the sister was secure in her chair before they moved her walker to the wall.

I kept staring at her faint hair, coiled into a permanent that exposed rambling pathways of scalp. The way she tottered, she must have gotten up at three to make it to the chapel. But when she had entered, her face held the same calm, pleasant look as the other women's. If you came every morning, over enough years, did the calm come?

Abruptly tears began to well, and I couldn't stop them, although I knuckled my eyes hard. In fact, I started to cry harder and had to bury my face in my hands to muffle the sniffling. After a minute I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. “There, now,” a voice said. “There. Is it someone you're crying for?”

“My mother,” I whispered, and though I didn't look up, I imagined that the woman beside me was nodding.

“No prayers are ever wasted,” she said. “God hears you. He'll bring your mother to his side. He sends tears as a sign.”

I glanced up then, blinking to see her mild face. “It's not that simple.”

“I'll pray for her too,” she said, smiling and patting my hand. I was saved from having to respond by the priest, who hurried through the door, straightening his stole. Swiping my hand across my nose, I stood and felt the sense of warm, liquid collapse drain away. Beached on the shore of my recognizable life, I was back on dry land, where I stood uncomfortably waiting for mass to end.

The old nun stayed seated through the opening prayers, but she swayed to her feet during the intercessions. After the other women offered their personal requests—“for my daughter Jenny,” “for my cousin's surgery”—finding comfort in the displacement of their powerlessness, as Ion would say, she spoke up. Her voice was dry as a rusk: “God's peace comes to his believers.” I had no idea what she meant, and I craned my neck, trying to see the nun's face. All I could see was her wavering stance and then the unceremonious way she tipped over, dropping to her left like a carelessly balanced board.

The women were at her side instantly, straightening her legs and rubbing her hands and feet, and the priest was already moving toward her. I stood watching from the back, caged between folding chairs, as out of place as an ungainly animal. The nun coughed once, tremendously. At least she was alive. For the second time my tears surged, and I groped my way to the door and left.

 

Ten minutes later I was still sitting in the cold car, listening to my breath shudder and catch. I felt as if I had been slapped by some vast hand, and I could stop crying only by focusing on what was directly in front of me: a spindly tree supported on three sides by wires. No leaves. Its branches made shadows like veins in the light from the church.

Going home was out of the question. Mom would ask about mass, and I'd be helpless to control my ragged crying. Or Dad would shoot me an ironic look, and I wasn't ready for that, either. When my feet got cold enough to hurt, I started the car, but from the parking lot I turned right, away from East Gables, where my parents were.