We Only Know So Much
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Authors: Elizabeth Crane
We Only Know So Much
ELIZABETH CRANE
A NOVEL
For Dad, who told me enough times to be a writer that I finally listened. Oh I miss you.
And for Lois, for your good care, love, and encouragement.
A
t the moment, the Copeland family is a bit at odds.
First of all, Priscilla is a bitch. Or at least a brat. An extreme brat. Look, we’re just reporting what we’ve heard. Maybe bitch is too harsh. Let’s say it this way: her attitude is often poor. The reasons are currently unclear. For one thing, her parents might have done better to rethink that name. Right? It’s not very contemporary. Something about it’s just bitchy-sounding. Maybe she knew that when she was little. She’s been this way since she was born and she’s nineteen now and it’s only gotten worse. What are you supposed to do when your daughter’s like this? No one wants to believe their own kid isn’t the nicest person, but think about it, girls like this aren’t born in a void. Jean and her husband, Gordon, have punished her, of course, told her no, admonished her, this sort of thing, but nothing’s worked. They’ve come to think it’s just innate. That may or may not be true. Maybe she got it from her great-grandmother. Genetically or otherwise. Just a thought. And Priscilla’s like this everywhere. At home, at work, at school, everywhere. Let’s hope that if you’re a waiter she never sits at your table. If she sits at your table she will be sending some shit back, and if you do that waiter thing where you introduce yourself, you will rue that choice because she will use your name so many times that by the time she leaves you will want to change it. Jean and Gordon almost never take her to restaurants anymore. Dinner at home is tough enough.
Somehow Priscilla has friends, she’s actually a fairly social creature, but even her friends know she’s got an attitude, and much is said about it behind her back. How Priscilla sees it is that she’s just
honest
. Her mother has of course pointed out many times that being honest doesn’t have to mean being rude. Priscilla is pretty, not the prettiest ever, but pretty, and she has good style, and hopes to be on television one day. Right now that’s a little nebulous in the sense that she’s not really sure in what capacity she’d like to appear on television. She’s still living at home, but she’s been working at Express for a year, since she graduated. A long year. She’s sort of interested in acting, but not really; really, she’s just more interested in being herself on television.
The boy, Otis, is a sweet nine-year-old who does all his math homework as soon as he gets his new textbook at the beginning of the year, just because he likes to. He’s been doing this since first grade, he’s in third now. Otis likes math, likes solving problems, figuring things out, kind of just can’t help but do one more, and before he knows it he’s done with the whole thing. This, of course, makes the rest of the year pretty boring, but his family has other things on their mind, so sometimes he builds crossword puzzles and other times he pulls the legs off insects, caterpillars in particular. Otis feels kind of bad about this habit, but when he gets in the mood to do it he just can’t stop himself. For this reason, Priscilla has not called her brother anything but
Freak
,
Baby Freak
, or
Freak Baby
for the past four years. Otis was named after the elevator company. Well, maybe not after the elevator company exactly, Jean wasn’t trying to commemorate them or anything, she just noticed it in an elevator once when she was pregnant with him and liked the sound of it. Gordon has never known about the origin of his son’s name. Jean has learned not to start conversations.
Gordon’s not a bad guy, but he’s kind of a know-it-all. He likes to tell you things he knows. Often and at length. He doesn’t mean to condescend, though his comments are sometimes taken that way. He’s a good bit away from pompous, and he’s always friendly and upbeat. He spent a summer traveling around Europe with his parents when he was ten, which provided him with an inexhaustible supply of information about anything European. He’s attractive enough, in a small-market weatherman kind of way. His hair is combed. Gordon has a degree in hospitality and an extensive background managing restaurants, and claims to have worked for the FBI, to have been a private detective and also a hospital aide (this qualifying him to discuss aspects of medicine and hospital management, almost as though he has a medical degree). As need be, if it pertains to the conversation, he will call up other brief careers and fields of study that date either to high school or to interim periods between longer jobs. It’s not that it’s not possible that he’s had all these jobs, though it certainly doesn’t seem probable. It’s more like the extent of his responsibilities has been exaggerated, that along the way he just took a lot of notes. For as long as he has been married, though, Gordon has been in middle management at a local chain of supermarkets, giving him a vast knowledge of any and all products sold in these supermarkets as well as many competing supermarkets, along with his knowledge of marketing, advertising, and customer service. What it all comes down to: we get it, Gordon, you know stuff.
Once, Jean had
a lot of potential
. Her school counselors said so; lots of people did. She was a straight-A student (though she worked hard for it), and she loved reading more than anything, but she didn’t know what anyone could do with that, career-wise. She started college with a major in library science, but found the required coursework dull, so she switched to liberal arts, taking a position as an administrative assistant in the English department of their local college that she kept until Priscilla was born. She was an attractive enough girl, long brown hair with a middle part and a nice slender figure, but was one of those girls who sort of went unnoticed. Picture: 1970s-era tenth-grade photo on the side of a milk carton with red-letter caption missing. Except she isn’t. She’d never had much of a sense of style, would observe the other girls at school with their corduroy bell-bottoms and coordinated polyester shirts, but when it came time to go shopping, the choices baffled her, and she tended to end up with whatever her mother picked out: straight-leg Lee jeans and blouses with Peter Pan collars or ties at the neck. Cotton. Plaid, often.
Jean married young. Gordon was, still is, a few years older, and Jean was thrilled that someone so worldly would pay her attention. When they first met, Jean had never been anywhere more exotic than Yellowstone, hadn’t been out of the country at all, so his stories about secret passageways in Bavarian castles and polo matches in Sardinia sounded incredibly romantic to her. (He hadn’t actually been to these places or events, he just told stories about them.)
Jean had just graduated college when she met Gordon through friends at a potluck dinner party. The hosts, her college roommate Margot and her live-in boyfriend, Paul, made number eight spaghetti with sauce from a jar and garlic bread, standard fare for such events; another friend brought a salad and a bottle of Wishbone Italian dressing, another brought a gallon of jug wine with a screw cap. Gordon had clenched his teeth when he saw the screw cap wine open and flowing; he’d brought two bottles with him, for dinner a
sangiovese chianti
(Gordon cannot pronounce anything foreign without earnest efforts at exact pronunciation—his friends tease him about it, but he’s committed) and a Sambuca (with coffee beans) for dessert (
This should complement the different notes in the dessert nicely
), and a tiramisu he made himself, with white chocolate mousse curls dappling the edges, a dusting of cocoa (with a flower stencil), all served in a swirl of passionfruit coulis.
I had something similar at O’Neal’s Baloon in New York once.
The dessert was such a sight that the entire dinner party was left mostly speechless but stifling giggles. Sticking out of the eight servings were tall, cylindrical, white chocolate–dipped wafers, each with a violet blossom tucked into the top.
The garnish was my own touch.
Jean, though, was thoroughly dazzled. The dinner wasn’t meant to be a fixup, mostly just some young college grads on a budget, celebrating their new lives, but Margot arranged for Jean and Gordon to sit together, just in case. And Jean had been thrilled, thought Gordon was quite nice-looking, more so because of his exciting stories and seemingly vast knowledge on any number of topics. Gordon, a few years older than the rest of the group, after a number of years at
exciting but less-promising
careers, had just been promoted to a dream job as a junior office manager at a small supermarket chain.
Off the floor
. Gordon had actually liked being
on the floor
while he was there, as much for getting to know the products as for the interaction with the people. Gordon has always considered himself a people person, though there are any number of people who might disagree. But he’d always wanted to move up, which was why he’d originally taken the job.
That first night, Gordon had talked to Jean exclusively for an hour over dinner, told her about his new promotion and his interest in cuisine. He asked her only a few, basic questions (
What do you do?
he asked; she said she worked at the college, and she might have said more, but he was already off, talking at length about how much he loved to read, and about some of his favorite authors—they both admired Vonnegut). But he looked directly into her eyes the whole time, laughed at her one joke (
Virginia Woolf walks into a bar . . .
), and told her he thought she looked like Katharine Ross,
Prettier, even
, which made her blush, and which was Gordon’s way of saying he was hot for her, and he smiled at her and told her he’d make dinner for her sometime, if she were
so inclined
. Jean gave Gordon her number and he called her that same night, said he just couldn’t wait to hear her voice again, which sent her swooning. Afterward, Jean called Margot to ask what she thought. Margot had suspected there might be sparks between them, but she had reservations about Gordon’s being a great match for anyone, thought he was a nice enough guy who hadn’t gotten his heart broken yet, and she was right. But she told Jean she thought it was
Great!
because she secretly considered Jean kind of mousy, and thought that Gordon might be about as good as it got for her.
Jean had never been to a man’s house for a first date before. She hadn’t been at all sure it was a good idea, and she knew it was okay to say no, but also didn’t want Gordon to feel spurned. She liked him. But the date went well, and although Gordon did not miss mention of a lone ingredient or step in the meal, over dinner he took more of an active interest in asking Jean about herself, learned more about her love of books, though it gradually emerged that they didn’t have many favorites in common, and Gordon was surprised at how many of the classics Jean had not read.
You haven’t read ‘A Farewell to Arms’? ‘Madame Bovary’? ‘Emma’?
That she was a woman who loved to read but didn’t love Austen floored him; his first guess was that she was either a romance fan or worse, but in fact she simply preferred more contemporary stories and language to village dances and polite conversations. She was a fan of Carver, Oates, and Paley, she told him, even Pynchon, though she admitted to finding him a challenge, and had always loved Salinger. Gordon had also read some of these, and appreciated that Jean was reading such a variety of complex works, but used all his might to hide his disappointment when she mentioned Salinger, whom he’d always thought was overrated. He was equally surprised, but impressed, that she had read and loved
Lolita
, had always assumed that most women would read it
only superficially
, but when he mentioned this to her he left off the
most women
part of the comment, knowing it wasn’t the right thing to say. So Jean had felt pleased with herself in keeping up with the sophisticated likes of Gordon Copeland, and when he drove her home, he told her he’d had a wonderful evening, and she could see that he was sincere, and shyly whispered that she had as well, and she let him give her a passionate kiss at the door that aroused her almost instantly.
Ten days later they were sleeping together. Jean had been with only one man before this, her high school boyfriend. It had never been very good, something she mostly just tolerated and hadn’t much looked forward to thereafter, and had decided she was willing to wait until she was more sure about someone. And with Gordon she was sure. She had heard people talk about soul mates, and though she’d previously found that term somewhat vague—it brought to mind an image of Siamese twins floating in space, a sort of literal but mystical connection—she was surer than she’d ever been that Gordon was hers. Her mind, body, and heart had never responded this way for anyone else, and she couldn’t imagine it ever would again. Gordon was stable but worldly. He told her he loved her, which was true (although it was subsequently said only at random, oddly timed intervals, like in the pitch dark of their bedroom as she pulled her pajamas on, intervals that made sense only to Gordon), and she was sure she felt the same way, that parts of her trembled that hadn’t trembled before. She imagined, listening to stories of his travels, that he would take her to these places, that they would make love on the grounds of Egyptian palaces, that they would stay in
pensiones
tucked away on cobblestone streets in small Italian cities and have pasta and wine in bed with the doors to the balcony open, sheer curtains blowing like she’d seen in the movies, that she would get a short haircut like Jean Seberg and he would chase her through the streets of Paris, take her against a wall in an alley at dusk on a wet, gray day.
BUT IN REALITY, THOUGH their lovemaking had been passionate and exciting in the beginning (Gordon had picked up a few tricks over the years and took a certain pride in being willing to please a woman before he got his, and Jean, not having been especially pleased with her first go-round, was, indeed, impressed), their travels had never taken them farther than Mexico City, where they went for their honeymoon. They had climbed the pyramids at Teotihuacan, but the steps were so narrow it was hard to get a good foothold, much less lie down and hope to make love without sliding all the way to the bottom. More than that, though, Gordon’s discourse on the history of the Mexican pyramids didn’t enhance the moment for her—she wanted to take in the breathtaking view, to feel the history, not talk about it. In the six months they courted, Jean had been to enough work parties to last her a lifetime; Gordon liked his coworkers and they seemed amused by him, but Jean had never been all that big on parties, which she tended to get through mostly by nodding and smiling. She preferred staying in with Gordon, where there was still a chance they’d have a two-way conversation. Within two years, she was pregnant with Priscilla.