The Saving Graces
The Saving Graces
Patricia Gaffney
1.
Emma.
If half of all marriages end in divorce, how long does the average marriage last? This isn't a math problem; I'd really like to know. I bet it's less than nine and a half years. That's how long the Saving Graces have been going strong, and we're not even getting restless. We still talk, still notice things about each other, weight loss, haircuts, new boots. As far as I know, nobody's looking around for a younger, firmer member.
Truthfully, I never thought we'd last this long. I only joined because Rudy made me. The other three, Lee, Isabel, and-Joan? Joanne? She didn't last; moved to Detroit with her urologist boyfriend, and we didn't keep up-the other three didn't strike me at that first meeting as bosom buddy material, frankly. I thought Lee was bossy and Isabel was old-thirty-nine. Well, I'll be forty next year, enough said there, and Lee is bossy, but she can't help it because she's always right. She really is, and it's a tribute to her exceptional nature that we don't all loathe her for it.
The first meeting went badly. We had it at Isabel's house-this was back when she was still married to Gary. God, these people are straight, I remember thinking. Straight and rich, that's what really got me - but I'd just moved into a dank little basement apartment in Georgetown for eleven hundred a month because of the address, so I was a little touchy about money. Lee looked as if she'd just come from spa day at Neiman's. Plus she was single, still in graduate school, and teaching special ed. part-time-you know how much money there is in that-and yet she lived around the block from Isabel in snooty Chevy Chase, in a house she wasn't renting but owned. Naturally I had it in for these people.
All the way home I explained to Rudy, with much wit and sarcasm and disdain, what was wrong with everybody, and why I couldn't possibly join a women's group whose members owned electric hedge trimmers, wore Ellen Tracy, remembered Eisenhower, dated urologists. "But they're nice," Rudy insisted. Which, of course, missed the point. Lots of people are nice, but you don't want to have dinner with them every other Thursday and exchange secrets.
The other thing was jealousy. I was small enough to mind that Rudy had a good friend other than me. One night a week she and Lee volunteered to teach reading to inner-city illiterates, and had gotten to know each other during the training. I never worried, then or now, that they would become best friends; I mean, if ever there were two people with nothing in common, it's Lee and Rudy. But I was my old insecure self (then and now), and too neurotic to recognize the potential beauty of the Saving Graces even when it was staring me in the face.
We weren't the Saving Graces yet, of course. Even now, we don't go around calling ourselves that in public. It's corny; it sounds like a TV sitcom. Doesn't it? "The Saving Graces," starring Valerie Bertinelli, Susan Dey, and Cybill Shepherd. Notice these are all attractive, smart, funny women who happen to be a little long in the tooth. Anyway, the genesis of our name is a private matter. Not for any particular reason-it's kind of funny, and it reflects well on us all. But we just don't talk about it. It's personal.
We were driving back from dinner at a restaurant in Great Falls (we eat out when the person whose turn it is doesn't feel like cooking), taking the long way because Rudy missed the Beltway turnoff. We'd been a group for about a year by then; we'd just lost Joan/Joanne but hadn't yet acquired Marsha, transient member number two, so it was just the four of us. I was sitting in the back seat. Rudy turned around to catch my impersonation of the waitress, who we all thought looked and sounded just like Emma Thompson.
Isabel yelled, "Look out!" and a split second later we hit the dog.
I can still see the expression on that yellow mutt face in the instant before the fender caught her on the shoulder and flipped her over the hood of Rudy's Saab-quizzical, curious, just mildly concerned. As if she were thinking, "Well, hm, isn't this interesting." Everybody screamed. I kept saying, "It's dead, it's dead, it's got to be dead," while Rudy jerked the car off the pavement. To tell the truth, if I'd been driving by myself, I might've kept going: I was sure it was dead, and I didn't want to see. When I was twelve I ran over a frog with my bike, and I'm still not over it. But Rudy killed the engine and everybody piled out, so I had to get out with them.
It wasn't dead. But we didn't know that until Lee suddenly metamorphosed, right there on
Between them, Rudy and Lee got the dog in the back seat of the Saab. Blood spotted its muzzle, I noticed in my peripheral vision, the only vision I was capable of looking at it in. "Curtis will have a fit," I remember muttering, watching a dark stain seep into the 900 Turbo's honey-colored leather. But Rudy, the one who would pay for it if Curtis had a fit, never batted an eye.
"Okay, there's a vet in Glen Echo," Isabel reported, sliding into the front seat next to Rudy so she could give directions. I had to get in back with Lee and the dog. I'm not good with the bleeding and possibly dying: they make me sick. Literally; once I saw a man, a neighbor of mine, pull an electric lawnmower over his own foot, and I doubled up and vomited on the sidewalk. This is true. So I stared out the window, concentrating on the way the car headlights illuminated the sign in front of the church across the way, OUR LADY OF GRACE-and if you're wondering what the punch line of this story is and if I'll ever get to it, that's pretty much it.
Rudy drove like a stock car racer to the vet's in Glen Echo. He wasn't there-it was
So that's it, the story of how we got our name. You've noticed I'm the only one who didn't actually do anything, who performed no semiheroic act whatsoever. The group, like Grace in its benevolence and generosity, chose to overlook this. Nobody's ever pointed it out even for a joke (something 1 myself couldn't have resisted, at least once in nine and a half years). No, I've always been unquestioningly accepted as a Saving Grace, and that alone, even if there were no other instances of support and love, kindness, fidelity, sympathy, comfort, and solidarity, would have guaranteed my loyalty for life.
But there are. A thousand. And since I didn't join an order of nuns, I should mention there have also been instances of jealousy, pettiness, pigheadedness, and let us not forget the occasional nervous breakdown. But they're nothing, and now I find it scary to think that prejudice against the upper middle class almost persuaded me to beg off with a polite excuse after that first meeting at Isabel's.
Good old Rudy, she kept me on the straight and narrow. Which is funny when you think about it. Because of us all, Rudy's by far the one who comes closest to being genuinely certifiable. Lee's the normal one. We even call her that-she takes it as a compliment. Which sort of says it all about Lee.
2.
The women's group held its first meeting on
Meetings were on the first and third Wednesdays of the month until September of '91, when I went back to school and had a conflict with an evening class. So we switched to Thursdays, and we've pretty much stuck with them ever since. We begin at seven-thirty and break up around ten or ten-fifteen. For the first few years, we would have a semiformal discussion of a topic we'd picked the week before - mothers and daughters, ambition, trust, sex, that sort of thing-beginning immediately after dinner and lasting for an hour or so. However, this practice has fallen by the way, and I for one miss it. From time to time I'll suggest to the group that we reinstate it, but I never get any support.
"We've already talked about everything under the sun;' Emma argues, "there's nothing left."
There's some truth to that, I'll admit, but I think the true problem is laziness. It's so much easier to gossip than it is to organize one's thoughts around a genuine, objective topic and stick to it. I like gossip as much as the next person, but I'm quite sure we had better discussions when we were organized.
It was when Susan Geiser was a member (February of '94 to April of '95) that we instituted the fifteen-minute rule, and that one is still in effect, although we don't need it now that Susan is gone. The Saving Graces had been without a fifth member for quite a while when Isabel met Susan and proposed her for membership. She had some lovely qualities, Susan did, and she could be quite interestinig and funny. But she had one flaw: she never shut up. I didn't mind it that much, but it drove Emma an~ Rudy wild. So one night Isabel suggested the fifteen-minute rule - in some wonderfully tactful way, as only Isabel could-and from that time on we've each taken fifteen minutes at dinner to tell how we are, what we've been doing or thinking lately. We're not rigid about it, nobody looks at her watch or anything; it's simply guideline. I'm usually finished in five minutes, whereas~Rudy needs at least twenty, so it works out very well.
Emma and Rudy always say I'm the one who thought up the idea for the group and did the original planning and organizing, but in truth it was Isabel at least as much as me. We'd been friends for about a year and a half, Isabel and I, ever since that Halloween night when Terry, her son, threw up on my new shoes. It was my first Halloween in the Chevy Chase house, and I was having the nicest time giving out popcorn and candy apples I'd made myself to all the little trick-or-treaters. Dozens and dozens of them - I'd moved from a high-rise in College Park, and I couldn't get over how many children lived in my new neighborhood. And they were so dear, so sweet in their little costumes, the tiny princesses and witches and Power Rangers. I'll admit I was having what Emma calls a "kid Jones." By eight-thirty the doorbell had almost stopped ringing, though, and by
I was turning out the porch light, getting ready to go up and take my shower, when something fell against the door. A heavy thud-I thought someone had thrown something, perhaps one of the pumpkins I'd carved and set out on the steps. I looked through the peephole and saw a boy. Two boys. One I recognized, so I opened the door.
"Trick or treat." That cracked them up; both boys, neither of whom was wearing a costume, bumped against each other and bent over double, convulsed with laughter. Drunken laughter.
"Are you clowns?" I asked.
"No, we're thugs," said the one whose name, I later learned, was Kevin. That sent them into more gales. They were holding pillowcases weighted down with candy, evidence of a long, successful night of trick-or-treating. Which meant no one had taken them in hand. And people wonder why today's youth is in trouble.
These two had finally come to the wrong house. "I know you," I said, pointing my finger in Terry's face. "You live on
I whipped around on Kevin. "Where do you live?" "
"Which side of
"Good." I didn't want him crossing that busy street drunk. "You go home, right now. And whatever you're drinking, i'll take it." I held out my hand.
Kevin looked like a baby, too, but not a very nice one. He had a buzz cut and a fake tattoo of a skull on his cheek; going for the Nazi look, I supposed. "Fuck you," he said, "and anyway, Terry's got it," while he tottered down the steps and wove a crooked route to the sidewalk. I turned my back on him. "See ya, T! See ya when the bitch is gone!" "Nice talk." Terry backed up and hit the screen door with a thump. He was trying to smile carelessly, but it wasn't working. "Key's an asshole," he slurred. "S'cuse me." The pillowcase slipped out of his slack fingers and thunked on the porch floor.
I picked it up. An almost-empty pint bottle of vodka sagged at the bottom under the candy. I moved a pumpkin and set the bottle on top of the newel post.
"Can you make it home by yourself?" "Sure." But he didn't move, and all that kept him from sliding to the floor were his locked knees.
I sighed. "All right, let's go." I took his arm to get him moving. We were about the same height then-now he's over six feet, and burly-but I was stronger, and it was no effort to take half his weight as we staggered and tacked down the empty sidewalk to the corner. He protested at first but said less and less the closer we got to his house. The porch light was Out; otherwise I might have noticed Terry getting paler, greener, and the dots of perspiration popping out on his whiskerless upper lip. He hung back at the front door-reluctant to face the music, I thought.
I knocked, and almost immediately Isabel pulled open the door, smiling, holding out a bowl of bite-size Snickers. I recognized her and couldn't help smiling back. She was that pleasant-faced older woman who walked her beagle in the same vacant lot-"the dog park," we call it in our neighborhood-where I walked Lettice, my
"Terry?" She saw her son behind me and frowned in puzzlement.
"Mom?" Well, no, what he actually said was, "
Isabel rushed outside. Right behind her came Gary. I can't remember what I thought of him that first time. Not much-husband, older, short and stocky, nondescript. He ended up taking care of Terry, and Isabel ended up taking care of me.
I've sat in her kitchen a thousand times since that night. Isabel isn't like any friend I've ever made, and, at first, even though I was drawn to her and liked her a lot, I couldn't imagine us ever being close. She was older, for one thing-only eight years, but it seemed like much more. It's because she's from another generation, Isabel says, but I think it's something else as well. Some people are born knowing things the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn. Then, too, she looked so much older, with her streaky gray hair in a bun, of all things, and no fashion sense whatsoever. (I've helped her a lot with her sense of style over the years.) But she was still beautiful. To me, that night, she looked like an aging Madonna - I don't mean the singer. This was in 1987, so her real troubles hadn't even begun, but already there was sadness in Isabel's face, and serenity, and that lit-from-within quality that's so extraordinary to me.
And I . . . well, my life was busy and full with part-time teaching and a full course load, as well as a thesis to write for my M.Ed., but I was still a bit lonely. And maybe. . . in the market for a mother. Not that I haven't got a mother. As my husband says, Oy, have I got a mother. What I mean is-I might have been in the market for a little mothering.
Emma says I don't understand irony, but I believe this is the definition of it: except for Isabel, none of the Saving Graces has ever had children, and the only one who wants any is me. And I can't. Plus-this is ironic, too-I think Isabel and I were born to be mothers, and yet we both had rather cold parents. I'm dying to be a mother, to be mothered. And she mothers everybody, but who mothered her? No one.
On second thought, perhaps this isn't ironic. Perhaps it's just pathetic.
She made me take off my pantyhose and put on a pair of clean socks-Terry's-and she gave me a mug of hot mulled cider to sip while she cleaned my shoes in her powder room sink. When she came back, we had the nicest, most comfortable conversation. She asked me all about myself. In particular, I remember telling her about some of the scrapes my two brothers used to get into as teenagers, and how they've both turned into pillars of the community, as the saying goes. I said that so she wouldn't worry too much about Terry being on the road to ruin. I didn't stay long, but as I was l eaving, it occurred to me that she'd found out a lot more about me than I had about her.
Terry came over the next day with a very nice apology, and also an invitation to dinner. So that's how it started. Isabel and I became friends. When we weren't visiting in each other's house, we were walking Lettice and Ernie in the dog park, or playing tennis together, or going for drives in the country. I cried with her when Terry decided to go to college at McGill in Montreal. She listened to every detail of my husband's long, shy courtship. After she walked out on Gary, she and Grace lived in my spare room for three weeks, and when she got cancer I felt as if it had happened to me. I can't imagine not knowing Isabel, can barely remember what my life was like before I met her.
A year or so after Terry's Halloween escapade, we were sitting on the linoleum floor, drying our dogs after their last bath of the summer, when Isabel said, "Leah Pavlik, you spend too much time with me in this kitchen. You ought to go out and play with friends your own age." I said, "You ought to go out and play with friends my own age." We laughed, and then-I'm not sure who said what, but before we knew it we were talking about starting a women's group.
All my life I've had a lot of girlfriends, and I admit I enjoy organizing them. I founded a girls-only club that met in my basement during sixth and seventh grades, and in high school I was cocaptain of the pompom squad, then president of my sorority in college. But since moving to
Isabel said that, not me, years later. She said we were growing wholesome vegetables for sustenance and gorgeous flowers for joy. I asked her which one I was, certain she'd say a wholesome vegetable, but she said I was both. "We're all both, you dolt," were her exact words.
First impressions. After we'd been a group for about a year, we had a meeting at which the topic (at my suggestion) was what we had all thought of each other-those of us who didn't know each other already-at the first Graces' meeting. I started us off, saying I'd thought Emma looked like someone in the arts, or the fringes of the arts, possibly a rock star. (More of a fading rock star, I really meant, because of the sort of blasé, world-weary air Emma likes to project. In reality she's not jaded in the least, and I don't understand why it's so important to her to look "cool" all the time.) Well, she was thrilled to hear that she looked like a rock star. She wanted to know which one, and I came up with Bonnie Raitt-thinking they both have pretty, sharp-featured faces and (it must be said) the same slightly snotty expression at times. Also the same hair-long, reddish blond, and, to put it charitably, self-styled. (I am dying to introduce Emma to Harold, my hairdresser, but she says she can't be bothered.) Rudy and Emma both said they had loved Isabel on sight, thought she was wonderful, although maybe a little old-fashioned, just a tad conservative. "Matronly, but in a good way," Emma said, and Rudy said, "No, motherly." I do remember that during that first meeting Isabel wore a red denim apron over her sweater and slacks -kept it on the whole evening, just forgot to take it off. That's how lacking in vanity she is. But conservative? No, no, no, no, no. Here is obvious proof that first impressions can be wildly inaccurate.
Isabel said she thought Rudy was one of the most beautiful women she'd ever seen in real life, and of course Emma and I agreed. The rest of us are fairly attractive women in a normal, average way, I would say. But Rudy's special. Everybody notices her; we can't go anywhere together and not attract attention. She has skin like an angel, a cover model's body, shiny, perfect, blue-black hair that does anything she wants it to. If she had only a gorgeous face, you could hate her, but behind the classic features there's such a sweetness, so much innocence and vulnerability, she brings out everybody's protective instincts. Everyone wants to save Rudy-men especially, she says. But so far, I'm sorry to say, I don't think anyone has.