The History of Great Things (5 page)

Y
ou're a sophomore at a nice private high school on the Upper West Side. We've chosen this school because it's safer than the public school in our neighborhood.

—Hey, Mom, can we talk about that?

—What about it?

—Does anything about that strike you as—not quite right?

—What's wrong about it?

—I guess I just wonder if you were worried about my safety more than you were about my education?

—Sure I was.

— . . .

—The neighborhood was still rough then, Betsy. The school you would have gone to had a reputation for being dangerous.

— . . .

—I don't understand what you find so wrong with what I'm saying.

—What about the quality of my education?

—We didn't pick just any school, if that's what you mean. This one didn't require uniforms.

—Okay. Moving on.

Tonight's dinner conversation is not to your liking, even though it's not all that different from any other night's dinner conversation. Mostly business. You see it otherwise.

Can I be excused?
you ask.

This is the real world. Get used to it
, your stepfather says.
It's not my world
, you say.
Don't be naive, Betsy. Stop always saying that! You think because you have one Jewish friend who isn't greedy that what's true isn't true? Well, who is good, to you, Victor? Seriously, what people are okay? Are we okay? Obviously not all white people are okay, because I know how you feel about Jews and gay people.

You better shape up, Betsy
, he says.

You go to your room and close the door to call your best friend.
They're so prejudiced, Nina. It's awful
, you say.
Oh, Betsy, I'm sure they're not
, she says.
There are like no people they don't talk shit about. I'm sure they don't mean it. Don't be naive, Nina.

You are decades away from recognizing what you just said as having anything to do with anything.

Later, when I think you may have calmed down, I knock quietly on your door and open it a crack.
It's just me.

I can see that you're not over it.

Betsy, you know how Victor is. Don't let it get to you
, I say.
Why am I supposed to be the one who changes?
you ask.
Because he won't. Well, I won't either. Mom, why don't you ever disagree with him? Considering some of what you've told me about Grandpa I would think you would have something to say. How can you complain about his prejudice when you have your own? That was totally different
, I say.
How was it different? It seems exactly the same. Have I ever said you couldn't be friends with someone because of their race or religion? Because that's what it was like when I was growing up. But what difference does it make if you still think and say awful things about them? We would never say those things to their face. I know! That's my point! Betsy,
come on, we have Jewish friends and gay friends, I've sung with people of every color and background. There are always exceptions. Oh my god! Well, there are. So you agree with him. Not on everything, no, of course not. How come when he gets going on me you never say anything? What? You never defend me, ever. It's like, when he goes off on me is like the only time you don't have something to say. Sweetheart. . . . Forget it, Mom. Can I be alone now please?

A
junior in high school, you haven't been dating yet because you go to a small school and there aren't a lot of choices. By winter, Nina is on her second or third serious boyfriend already; it is decided that they will fix you up on a blind double date with them and his friend Ed. After some deliberation, you pick out a striped button-down shirt and the gray cashmere V-neck sweater you got on sale in the men's department at Charivari, with a pair of high-waisted jeans and blue Wallabees.
Maybe a nice necklace? I could lend you something. No thanks, Mom. What about a pair of boots instead of those, honey? It's snowy out. Yeah, I can see out the window,
Mom
. You look at me like I have no idea what's good.
You could bring a pair of heels. Heels with jeans? Don't act like people don't wear that now. I've seen the pictures of Bianca Jagger. Wait, you know who Bianca Jagger is? Yes, Betsy. So that means you know who Mick Jagger is? He's that hideous-looking rock singer, right?
Do you want to bother picking this apart? The fact that your mother knows who Mick and Bianca Jagger are, or the fact that she finds him hideous? You guess not.
Well, anyway, I'm not going to a disco, I'm going on a date. What's Nina wearing? What difference does it make what Nina's wearing? You just called Nina to find out what she was wearing. Yes,
because Nina likes to dress the same as me, Mom. Oh.
This isn't the complete truth, though, because while dressing identically to Nina is unacceptable, neither do you want to wear something radically different.
Okay, what about a scarf? Do you want to borrow a scarf?
People don't wear scarves, Mom. I wear scarves. Mom, it's 1977! I know what year it is. Well you don't seem to know how we dress now. What are the boys wearing? How should I know! I heard you ask Nina just now. Don't listen to me in my room! I wasn't trying to listen to you. It's not a big apartment. Well, don't tell me what to wear. I can dress myself. I know that, I'm just thinking you might want him to ask you out again.
You look at me like I've stabbed a basket full of kittens. Way down in you there's one tiny cell of your being that wants to challenge me on this statement, to look into it more deeply, to ask about a dozen questions about the idea behind this statement, but you aren't there yet. It's a cell that isn't a fully realized idea that can be formed into words.
I thought I looked cute in this! Well, you always look cute, you'd look cute in a paper sack, but I wouldn't send you out in that either. Get out of my room! You better watch it, daughter.

Ed, it turns out, is gaga for you. When he comes to pick you up at our house for your second date, I can tell he has spent hours picking out his clothes because he's wearing a nice pair of pressed slacks, Gucci loafers, a checked button-down shirt, and a crewneck sweater. Ed comes to pick you up and he sits down with us and he's all pink in the face, can't stop smiling, like the girlfriend sweepstakes has come to his door with a bouquet of balloons and you wearing a prom dress, a tiara, and a sash. Ed is richer than Croesus and takes you to Windows on the World on your first official date, and you talk about school, where you might go to college. He's applying to Ivy League schools, but you wouldn't get into any of those, which is fine, you don't care
all that much, and he says it's not that important even though he's not so sure that's true; all he cares about for the time being is making you happy. At any given moment he will say or do whatever he thinks might accomplish that goal. You don't look at him much on this date; even though the conversation is good, you aren't very good at eye contact, and also he has to compete with the view. Ed maybe didn't fully think through his choice of restaurant, because you are given to dreaming, but he wouldn't know that, and when you look out those windows, uptown, you may as well be floating right out of them and over the city, looking at water towers and rooftops and cornices; you could do an aerial tour just looking at cornices alone, wonder who made them, what went into cornice-making, was that a job, cornice-maker, when did beautiful cornices go out of fashion, what happened to all the cornice-makers when that happened; or you could take a turn west and tour your life here so far, you could go up and down streets and note the ones you've walked on and the ones you haven't, noting how very many you haven't, wondering how there could be so many people on this small island, just like you did when you were six, whose idea was that, wasn't there ever a time when anyone, planners or whoever, stopped to say
Hey, guys, this island isn't all that big
, had some kind of city-planning meeting, a bunch of round men in old-timey three-piece suits, smoking fat cigars,
We'll just keep going uptown
, they say, a lone skinny man says
It's not infinite
, the round men say,
The sky is!
; you float back out, wonder what happened to the skinny man, fly over to the East Side, swoop down over a Fifth Avenue penthouse, railings and trees wrapped in lights, imagine a future with Ed, your future in general seems so far away, but it's hard to picture yourself in a life this nice, like, there's a nice life for you out there, you're pretty sure, less swanky probably,
and you wonder what really is to come, where your place is. You want to ask him if he thinks about those things too, you imagine that rich kids might not really wonder about anything, that they don't have to, that a certain course is already set for them, which may or may not be true; what may be just as true is that, either way, Ed would like to take your hand and join you out there above the city, and talk about other lifetimes when it was the Brooklyn Bridge that towered over everything, or a time when bums on the Bowery still wore suits and ties and hats, or when your entire family together could barely afford your nine-dollar-a-month rent, but there was still something about these times, a certain type of shared experience that you know doesn't exist now. But these don't seem like first-date conversations, which is too bad, because Ed would pretty much spend the rest of his life listening to whatever you had to say; you could be that couple that meets in high school and stays together forever, if you wanted to be; he would always love you like this if you let him, would entertain any romantic notion you put forward, would absolutely take you back to any one of those eras if he could. Instead, you talk about movies you like, and music, and you talk about Nina, and her boyfriend, how they're the perfect couple. (She's wealthy, too, and also boys are paying more attention to her than to you, not because she's more beautiful, yes, she's beautiful, but because she's warmer and more open and friendly than you are. That's just the truth.) About twenty times during dinner he wants to tell you how pretty you are, but he never says it, even once, because he doesn't want to scare you, and also because he figures you hear it all the time. He doesn't know yet that at this point you haven't heard it from anyone besides your mother; this is your first date with anyone, not just him. He takes you home in a taxi and gets out to kiss
you good-night on the cheek, and the next day you tell us
It was nice
, but that's all we can get out of you, pretty much all we ever hear about it for the duration, even though you date him for the next few months, though you've known since the aerial tour of the city that there was something else ahead for you, even if you didn't know what just yet. He tries again and again to get you to do anything beyond kissing, but when given the choice between saying you're not ready for more and swatting his hand away, you're willing to swat for the length of time that you're together rather than actually talk about it.

Victor and I find out you've broken up with him around two months after the fact, maybe a month after we first asked why we hadn't seen him lately. You'd mentioned that he was going to Gstaad or someplace with his family, but that was a while ago. Also during this time we never have to pry the phone out of your hands to make a call, or if we do it's because Nina's on the other end. Eventually you tell us that you and Ed broke up months ago, that you don't want to talk about it.
What? Oh no, honey, I'm so sorry
, I say, and you say
I broke up with him, it's fine
. It's not really fine, you liked Ed a lot, and you very much wanted a boyfriend, you just didn't think Ed was the one. Later on, I find out from Nina that Ed was pretty crushed about it; you know how Nina sometimes lets things slip.

—Am I right?

—Well, I'd tell you now, but I don't want to spoil your idea of me.

Y
ou first meet Frederick in your freshman year at Iowa, second semester. The University of Iowa, about an hour from Muscatine, seems like Paris to you at this time. You share a dorm room with a gal named Joyce from Cedar Rapids who strikes you as positively cosmopolitan, who has actually been to Paris and is happy to talk about it all the day long. Joyce has a navy gabardine dress with impeccable seaming that she bought in Paris, a dress with
Madame de Something-or-Other
on the giant label on the back of neck, in the most elegant cursive you've ever seen. Your first thought is that you and Mother could sew a dress just like it, but something about that label conjures entire worlds; it's practically the size of a dance card, finely stitched aubergine letters slanted against an ivory background, with the word
PARIS
in a boldly serifed font below. (You don't know what a serif is yet, but you can tell class when you see it.) You major in music, to some concern of Mother and Daddy, who aren't sure what one does with such a degree (you explain that you can be a music teacher, which is true, but not at all what you have in mind—not that you're altogether sure what you do have in mind just yet, something vaguely—
bigger
), but their real hope is that you'll meet a nice young man to marry
and create a family with sometime after graduation. It will not displease them when you meet this goal well before graduation.

The aforementioned nice man is also your music history professor. He's not quite as dreamy as William Holden, but Fred is handsome, with dark hair and twinkly green eyes, and you are no different than about six other girls in that auditorium in that you're absentmindedly doodling hearts on the end pages of your textbook (an antique sheet music design), though yours manifest as musical notes with hearts for noteheads and delicate ribbons in place of the flags. Absolutely nothing untoward will occur during class, will not even occur to him (he has zero idea that even one girl is looking his way), but at the end-of-year department picnic, he will offer to refill your cup of punch, and as he hands it over he becomes aware that you are an adult female and you become aware of his awareness, and no one will think anything of it when he begins to court you; this is the last class you will have need to take with him. He will drive to Muscatine every Saturday for the rest of the summer, meeting your parents (who are elated that you have landed such a worldly, scholarly, handsome man), always in a tie and jacket, even for an ice cream cone and a walk by the river. He hands you a ring on New Year's Eve that year, and two summers later you will be married in Muscatine, in a dress your mother made, five bridesmaids at your side.

There isn't quite enough time to plan the dream wedding—your studies take up all your time, you're preparing to graduate in June and have been giving thought to a graduate degree—and after putting it off as long as possible, you and Mother decide that it will be at the Methodist church up the street where you've reluctantly been going to services since you were born. There was some talk about having it at the Cranes' estate in Mount Pleasant, but that set your two polite mothers into utter disagreement,
while you stood by, nearly invisible, in the discussion. This negotiation is almost like a Mafia sit-down, but with polite middle-aged Midwestern mothers. Mrs. Crane opens the dialogue by saying with great pride that she has hosted several weddings on the lawn, that it is an absolutely lovely and scenic place for a wedding, and that for these occasions they have a set of Doric columns they keep in the barn to use for an aisle or an altar. She comes armed with photos of Fred's sister's wedding; it is undeniably picturesque, with the old ivy-covered barn, the rose garden, and the pond in the background. Your mother counters on your behalf that it is your preference to have the ceremony here in Muscatine, at your own church. She added that last part; the church is
her
preference. You'd prefer to have it at the Plaza in New York, with nary a minister in sight, a vision from a picture you saw in
Brides
magazine, a fantasy. But there are only two options on the table, and of these you would definitely prefer Muscatine, mainly because that's where your friends and family are and you want to be sure everyone comes. Mrs. Crane counters that they would
of course
be willing to foot the bill for the entire thing, which gives your mother a moment's pause; as parents of the bride, they will be funding the wedding, that's just the way it's done, though their income has always been modest and your mother knows the Cranes are quite well-to-do. Mrs. Crane picks up on this pause, but your mother cannot have everyone in town knowing that they let someone else pay for their daughter's wedding (even though they have just recovered from Marjorie's wedding, which set them back $675). She thanks Mrs. Crane for her kindness and says
It's settled, Lois really wants to have it here
, and so you will have the ceremony at the church here and the reception in the ballroom at the Hotel Muscatine even if it costs you another pretty penny and that will be that.

You and Mother pick out a Butterick pattern at the fabric store downtown, strapless but with a lace overlay that has cap sleeves, nipped tight at the waist, a full skirt. You both
ooh
and
ah
over some of the fabrics; this might be the most fun part, doing this with your mother, choosing a pure white satin for the bodice and skirt, a gorgeous floral lace for the overlay, with a scalloped edge around the neckline. Even the tulle for the underskirt and veil is dreamy. But when you get home and Marjorie sits you down at the dining room table with a to-do list the length of her arm, you're suddenly not sure you shouldn't have gone to a justice of the peace and called it a day. On Marjorie's list: bridesmaid's dresses (she would prefer mid-calf to the just-below-knee-length pattern you've chosen), gloves, flowers, dinner, music, invitations and RSVPs, favors for the table, place cards, cake. Marjorie is excited but also serious. This is a big job; studying for the music theory final is infinitely more appealing than wedding planning right now (and this class has been a total drudge, confusing from the get-go, where is the theory?), and you say so, and Marjorie asks
What's wrong with you? This is your wedding, the most exciting day of your life
, and this idea fills you with horror, frankly, that you might get only one exciting day, but all you can come up with to say is
Nothing's wrong with me, what's wrong with you?
and Marjorie says
I don't have to help you, you know
, and you say
Then don't
, and Marjorie gets up from the table and you say
No wait, do
, and it's a bummer to have to ask Marjorie for help in this way, especially when she sits back down and says
I thought so
, smiling while you glower. She might as well have a list that says
house, cleaning, cooking, wifely duties, baby, baby, grandbaby, grandbaby, grandbaby, grandbaby, dead, done, the end
.

For the most part, the next few months are a blur of wedding planning. Mother and Marjorie are so excited about it that
they hardly notice that you find the planning not nearly as much fun as they do. At the printer's, a discussion of fonts lasts an hour, until you can't tell a roman from an italic, and you've definitely stopped caring. For one entire afternoon, you sit and wrap candies in scraps of tulle tied with a bow and a tag that says
Frederick and Lois Crane, August 12, 1956
—why is his name first, on everything? You address envelopes, you address return envelopes, you lick stamps, you lick envelopes, you come to despise envelopes and whoever invented them. You fold place cards and hand-write the names of the guests, make seating charts until your fingers cramp.
Can't they sit wherever they want? It's buffet anyway. Heavens no, Lois, do you know what will happen if Cousin Carol sits next to Bernie Hofstrad? I guess I don't. Well you don't want to.
You get an A-minus on one of your music theory papers because there was no time to proofread it a second time, and since you can't abide the idea of graduating from college with less than a 4.0 GPA, you beg the professor to give you one more chance to revise. That spring, you finish college in three years—no surprise there. Your parents attend the graduation; they are beyond proud to have two college graduates for daughters; but there's no doubt that everyone's primary focus is the wedding, and there's no real celebration beyond milkshakes at the drugstore counter downtown. Your twentieth birthday, the same weekend as your graduation, is almost forgotten. Mother makes a sheet cake, Daddy gives you a Brownie camera (
For your honeymoon!
he says), and then it's back to wedding planning.

One afternoon, in the midst of all this, you try to steal a catnap; you lock the bedroom door, hoping to clear your head, to remember why you wanted to do this in the first place; it's all moving so swiftly, as though of its own accord. But Mother needs to hem your dress, and Marjorie's knocking on the door
in a frenzy, because somehow boutonnieres got overlooked, and
if they don't have any white rosebuds left would you settle for carnations, and did you remember to call the minister, that was your job
, and you yell
Goddammit, Marjorie, just let me rest for five minutes!
and Marjorie says
Ooh, you took the lord's name in vain!
though really she just thinks it's funny, adds
There's no rest for the wicked!
and you yell
You're wicked! You're wicked! Leave me be!
and pull a pillow over your head.

Come the big day, Daddy walks you down the aisle with a big grin, you see Fred at the altar absolutely in love, and you're grateful; he's handsome and he's solid, you're sure he'll take care of everything, of you, that you've made the right choice, that there couldn't be any other choice—even though for a minute, walking toward the altar, you picture yourself taking a detour through the pews and out a side door, jumping into your father's Chrysler for destinations unknown, for that other life that will be exactly right, even if you don't know what that is right now. Des Moines, maybe! You went there once on a chartered bus with your high school chorus to hear the orchestra; it was positively magnificent. What exactly would you do in Des Moines, though? What do people do in big cities? Do people go to the orchestra every night? You try to picture elegant Des Moines cocktail parties on the nineteenth floor of the Equitable Building overlooking the city, clinking crystal stemware and talking about important things and being generally clever and erudite. Are you erudite at all? You think of yourself as clever. But clever enough for Des Moines? For anywhere that isn't Muscatine? You hope, but you don't know. The not knowing is what snaps you back into the aisle headed for the altar, where you promise to love, honor, and obey, and hope the future takes care of itself.