We Only Know So Much (2 page)

For a moment, after Priscilla was born, there had been a renewed burst of excitement and joy. Jean had suffered a late-stage miscarriage before Priscilla, less than a year after her marriage, had been crushed, of course, and it had taken some trying for her to get pregnant again. So when their healthy, beautiful baby girl was born, Gordon and Jean were briefly closer than ever. Gordon had been in the delivery room and everything, was
astounded by the miracle of the human reproductive system
, handed the slimy, new Priscilla over to her mother in awe, and they felt as connected as they ever had, for about three whole speechless minutes before Priscilla started screaming. Weird, throaty, scratchy, animal sounds came from this tiny life in her mother’s arms, and no breast, no gentle touch, no lullaby would calm this child until she had thoroughly exhausted herself and everyone in earshot, sometimes not even then. In the first year, Jean made many more than the required visits to the pediatrician; Priscilla was diagnosed with croup and colic and was treated accordingly, but the cries were seemingly interminable. When she was old enough to take solid foods she ate as little as possible, refusing it, spitting it out or throwing it up. Jean tried every possible food in every possible combination. Gordon threw his many two cents in, and though this sometimes tested her patience, she tried all his suggestions too (
swaddling has been in practice since biblical times
), to no avail. The colic and the croup finally waned after a year, but Priscilla remained fussy and prone to crying, pouting, and throwing things as soon as she had the muscle to lift them. Jean read every book she could find on child care, tried everything from a family bed to tough love, experimented with “calming” foods and educational toys designed to focus a child’s attention away from negative stimulation. Gordon drew the line at child psychology; the doctors had been adamant that Priscilla was a perfectly healthy, normal child, that some were just fussier than others, that she’d grow out of it; this was what Gordon wanted to hear, and he stuck with it. Jean secretly took Priscilla to a child psychologist anyway, who suggested things to try at home but essentially agreed with the doctors. And, of course, though Priscilla did eventually stop crying, she remained crabby, and pretty much refused to do anything she was told to do—not without sulking, anyway. By the time she was three and a half she was picking out her own outfits, refusing to wear most of the frilly, pink girl things her mother thought she’d looked so precious in, opting for surprisingly subtle shades and simple designs, until Jean started buying such things exclusively, knowing that anything else just wouldn’t get worn.

When the time came for Priscilla to enter preschool, then, it was a relief; grade school was the best thing ever. Jean felt awful about how much she enjoyed it when her child was out of the house; she loved her, of course, actually loved her beyond words, but those hours of the day when Priscilla was fussing in someone else’s care were wonderful hours of getting lost in the books she adored, a favorite pastime she’d put aside from almost the moment her daughter had been born. For a period of time, Jean even delved into erotica, had an anthology of erotic short stories she’d read over and over; she found herself suddenly interested in masturbating, learned to please herself quite handily, as it were, a sweet release from the tension of the rest of her day. And this, too, inevitably contributed to her drawing away from her husband.

JEAN HAD BEEN CAREFUL to use birth control after Priscilla, convinced that a second child would be no different in temperament. So when she got pregnant, accidentally, with Otis, almost nine years later, she spent most of those nine months worrying about repeating Priscilla’s early years. It was a needless concern. Whatever Priscilla was, Otis was the opposite. Gordon had been as thrilled about this pregnancy as he’d been the first time; he’d hoped for a boy, a perfect set, and he’d seemingly erased Priscilla’s croupy years from his mind, no doubt because he was at work for forty croup hours a week. Again, Gordon was in the delivery room for the birth, had wanted to videotape it because he was so sorry he hadn’t the first time ( Jean said
No
, and when pressed by Gordon, said only
It’s not up for discussion
), but again Jean and Gordon had a moment in the delivery room—more than a moment this time, actually. Otis took to Jean’s breast easily and hungrily as Gordon watched, rapt, as though he were watching Mary herself, after which Otis fell into a deep sleep and Gordon lay next to his wife and son, content and proud of them both. He stroked her hair, still sticky with sweat, and heaped rambly, damp-eyed praise on Jean, told her he’d never been one for religion but felt so grateful for what seemed miraculous to him, grateful she’d been willing to bear him another child, a son to carry the Copeland name, and Jean felt his sincerity. But Gordon, never one for brevity, went on. Gordon imagined going through the birth canal, told Jean
I know it’s not an easy thing for the mother, of course, but imagine what it’s like for the child,
he said,
it’s like you’re struggling against this vast darkness and then finally, light, a victory!
That, unsurprisingly, was the moment when the moment was lost.

GORDON HASN’T CHANGED MUCH. Once a month or so he still prepares a gourmet meal for the family, but it always comes with the entry fee of listening to every last detail of how the meal was prepared, along with any relevant cultural history of the ingredients and/or the dish itself. Jean does most of the cooking now, but even when she does, the historical commentary is hard to avoid. These days, if you should sit down to breakfast at the Copelands’ and compliment Jean on her delicious pancakes, there’s only a small chance that she might finish saying
Thank you
before Gordon starts in with something like this:
Did you know that the pancake originated in prehistoric times? They would use dry seed flours, which are rich with carbohydrates, and cook them on heated stones or in earthenware pots. The etymology of the word
pancake
dates back to 1430! Of course, there are regional varieties of the pancake around the world. For example, in Germany, pancakes are often made from potatoes; in Wales, they are sometimes made with oatmeal. In some Asian countries, pancakes are made with fermented rice batter and served with pickles! Can you imagine? Pickles! Also, one should never confuse a crèpe with a traditional pancake; although they have similarities, those are very different things, very different. Though it is true that either pancakes or crèpes can be served with either sweet or savory accompaniments, not just with butter and maple syrup, as Americans traditionally eat them.

Gordon’s diction is very precise; he leaves no syllable or letter unpronounced, and uses the word “American” as though he isn’t one himself. Jean might take his comments about American cuisine as the mild insults they are, but refrains from pointing out that that’s the way she and the kids like it. Instead she screws her mouth up into a tight little circle that she thinks no one will notice, although Otis actually does. In the earliest throes of her love for Gordon, Jean hadn’t been bothered by his lecturing, though she certainly noticed that he was always happy to direct his knowledge at anyone nearby. Eventually, a little window into the future flickered open in her mind, a sort of a gut feeling that his particular brand of chattiness might wear thin, but she let it flicker right out. Solution: several years in, Jean simply stopped engaging in any conversation with Gordon that wasn’t necessary for plan-making; she no longer made any casual comments that might provide him an opening. Dealing with Priscilla took just about all the emotional energy she had.

And so, by the time Jean met another man, some seventeen years later, you can imagine that she needed a little break.

JAMES, JEAN’S LOVER, IS a good man (although he has a history of depression that Jean is unaware of, for which he’s long been treated with a combination of prescription medication and psychotherapy, which seems to work well). He teaches art at the public high school, and he, too, pays attention to Jean, but in a normal way; their conversations actually go back and forth. When Jean first met James, at her book group, she’d thought he was nice-looking, with his thick, tousled brown curls; there was something soft about him in general, a slight softness around his middle, a warmth in his eyes. She hadn’t immediately wanted to take him on the floor or anything, that would happen much later, after she got to know him, not that she was a take-someone-on-the-floor kind of woman anyway. The main thing with James was that Jean felt something she could hardly remember feeling with Gordon. Seen? Was that it? She wasn’t sure, but it felt right, in spite of the obvious wrongness of it. The group had begrudgingly read
A Confederacy of Dunces
, James’s pick, and when Jean made a tentative comment—that the book had made her think about art and fate in a new way—James responded with a comment that was roughly equal in length and thoughtfulness, an opening for subsequent comments to occur.

Jean, of course, did not enter into her extramarital relationship lightly; neither did James. They were friends for a great while before becoming more; they talked a great deal about their feelings of guilt and shame, and had talked about ending it, but they never really came close to breaking it off. No one knew. No one would ever have suspected Jean of going outside the marriage, least of all Jean.

It had begun innocently enough, they’d gone for coffee after book group a couple of times, no big deal. Well, but who are we kidding, that’s not really true, there were sparks, and they both knew it. They never told anyone they were going out for coffee on their own. It went on like this for a year before it became more: once a month they’d have coffee, and talk for a couple of hours about everything under the sun. Jean confided in James about the distance in her marriage and James told her of his own long-term relationship that had ended in heartbreak some years earlier—the woman had left him abruptly and moved out of state to be with another man, with little explanation. Jean couldn’t imagine who would ever leave such a lovely man, felt something in her chest she could barely recall ever having felt, had a vague memory that she’d felt this way about Gordon when they first met, but couldn’t quite grab on to it. She only knew that this feeling had been sustaining her more and more lately. She told herself that she and James weren’t doing anything wrong, just having coffee, maybe sending a few emails every now and again, once every week or two, every couple of days, every day, a few times a day, until finally one day he wrote,
You are a beautiful, flowering tree and I am a tired bird looking for my nest.

The day after that, James prepared a picnic for Jean; they went down to the lake. He brought his dog, Mott the Hoople, a giant brindle mastiff. Mott loved nothing more than to take one quick run into the lake after a bird, then come back and lie down with his long legs stretched out by James for the rest of the afternoon. They talked as always, about books and art and life, and James confessed that he could no longer hide how he felt about Jean, and they kissed and held hands, drank wine and ate cheese and figs, and she didn’t have to hear anything about the provenance of the wine or the cheese or the figs, and they fell asleep for a little while, the three of them, and it was about as beautiful a day as Jean had ever had. They soon became lovers.

So, there’s love here, this much we can’t deny, some real true love between Jean and James, and no one knows, but it’s a sort of bittersweet joy for Jean, who’s abided Gordon and his information for a long time, and no one in her family is interested enough in her to notice. Well, except for Otis, whose observational skills are slightly above average for his age, but his communication skills are still at the third-grade level, so he doesn’t say anything about it. And it’s not like he knows what’s going on with his mom, specifically. It’s more like he’s just noticed that his mom has been acting a bit weird for a while where his father and sister are too busy with themselves to bother.

two

T
he Copelands live in a small Midwestern college town where Gordon and Jean were both born and raised. Their house is a good-sized colonial, a hundred-plus years old, with a four-acre meadow and a goldfish pond, that had belonged to Gordon’s grandparents when he was growing up. It’s fairly close to the center of town, and is the largest property in the immediate vicinity. When the town was built, everyone had large parcels, many of them farms, but most of their neighbors had long since split up their lots. The Copelands kept theirs intact. When the grandkids and great-grandkids were young, those four acres were like their own private park, where they came for holidays, family reunions, and weddings, canoeing and fishing and running barefoot in the summer, ice skating and sledding and snowball fights in the winter.

There had been quite a bit of discussion between Gordon and Jean about moving into this house. At first they had lived in a split-level ranch, one they’d bought a year after they’d gotten married; the house still had bits of early-seventies décor (olive green wallpaper in the hall bathroom, shag carpet in the family room) that remained in place even after they left. Jean had always loved that house. It was hers. But the deal was this: Gordon’s father, Theodore, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years before; his wife, Laura, was still alive and well then, and at the time he was still able to function easily in his own home. After he retired, though, Theodore and Laura had moved into his parents’ home; the house had already been added onto twice, so there was plenty of room, and Theodore had wanted his parents to be able to stay in their own home and to help care for them for as long as possible. Unfortunately, Theodore’s wife died suddenly about two years after the move, and Gordon’s grandfather, Baron, had died around the same time.

So as Theodore and Vivian, Theodore’s now ninety-eight-year-old mother, each grew more incapable in their own ways, Gordon convinced Jean to move into his grandparents’ home, to make it easier to care for them both. He promised Jean a kitchen remodel, and suggested a separate, handicap-accessible ground-floor efficiency for the elders.
Economically
, Gordon argued,
it won’t affect us; they’ve both invested well, and they have more than enough funds for in-home care for the rest of their lives, if needed.
Gordon felt he’d had a privileged childhood and wanted to do the right thing by his family, as he believed his parents had. Jean couldn’t disagree, but one of the things that Gordon left out of the picture was that she would undoubtedly bear much of this burden, that moving in would mean any shift to in-home care would be put off for as long as possible.

Jean also refrained from mentioning the palpable tension she’d always felt between Theodore and Vivian. For decades, Vivian had indulged in ongoing, though veiled, criticism of his choice in Laura for a wife (Laura had had a youthful marriage
annulled
, a word Vivian would linger on as though it were the ultimate scandal, before adding a comment along the lines of
Oh, but you know she is lovely
). She had also made no bones about her disappointment in her son’s youthful pursuit of music and photography instead of taking over the jewelry store her husband had worked so hard to build. (Theodore
did
ultimately take over the business, which briefly raised her pride in her son, but when he later focused on the shop’s optometry sideline, finally selling the jewelry part of the store after her husband retired, Vivian was displeased to no end.)

Gordon had seemed oblivious to the tension between his grandmother and his father, preferring to view his family life and childhood as idyllic, something out of the movies, and he chose to hope—against Jean’s better judgment—that moving in with them wouldn’t be a problem. Jean, as always, kept her uncertainties to herself. She had always adored Gordon’s father, but his grandmother seemed almost as scornful of Jean as she had been of Laura. (Vivian found ways to be disapproving of a lot of people and things generated after about 1935, though her comments were always delivered with a lilt in her voice.) Jean, thus, had reasonable concerns about what it would mean to move into Vivian’s home. Vivian insisted that she wanted them to feel that it was their own home, though it would soon be clear enough that this was not entirely sincere. Nevertheless, move they did. Jean knocked out the mudroom to create a larger kitchen with a sitting area, knocked out most of the back wall to create a huge picture window overlooking the meadow and pond, and added a bright, airy efficiency for the elder Copelands, fully outfitted for the handicapped and with easy access directly into the main house. The efficiency has a kitchenette of its own, where they eat lunch and breakfast many days, though most often they eat together as a family in the main house.

In the years since they’ve moved in, Theodore’s Parkinson’s has progressed in a variety of ways. He can still walk, but his balance is wobbly, so he prefers to shuffle around with his walker or in his wheelchair. For about a year, he’s been wearing a device on a string around his neck that he simply has to press in order to call the hospital should he fall down or find himself hurt when he’s in a room by himself. He has some difficulty projecting his voice, so he talks quite a bit less than he used to. He gets asked to repeat himself a lot, and he gets tired of it, so unless he really feels like putting in the effort, he often prefers just to listen. His recall for things from the distant past is still impressive. Theodore was always a big reader and collector—of stamps, coins, old postcards—and he’s been a passionate amateur photographer since the age of twelve, when he got his first camera, a Brownie given to him by his mother (a gift she would later deny she’d given). He still recognizes the family, usually. On occasion, he’s mistaken his mother for his wife, but tends to pass it off as just a slip, and the family is fine ignoring this progression for the time being. One morning he asked Gordon what his father did for a living.
He was an optometrist
, Gordon said.
Oh, just like me!
Theodore replied. When Gordon then pointed out that Theodore
was
his father, Theodore smiled wryly.
So your mother claimed, anyway
. His face is slightly stiffer, less expressive now than in the past, but his clear green eyes still sparkle with mischief. He had always spent a lot of time with Priscilla and Otis, reading them books, taking Otis fishing in his canoe, and both the grandkids adore him; he is pretty much the only member of the family that Priscilla would be described as openly adoring, though she rarely spends time alone with him now.

The big thing that’s changed with Theodore is his lack of interest in the things that previously used to interest him, books being at the top of the list, followed by Westerns and certain corny TV shows. He’s still engaged by some of his collections; he has a box of commemorative medals he likes to look through—they have famous composers on them—and he tends to forget he’s shown you these things before, and so shows them again and again, and the family has yet to establish a consistent protocol for how to deal with this. Gordon, for example, says nothing at all, usually just walks away to do something else. Otis sits with his grandfather again and again, to the point where he’s memorized all the faces of the composers. He’d usually rather be doing something else, like working on a crossword, but doesn’t know how to excuse himself. If Priscilla sees her grandfather with the box of medals, she just tries to ditch the room before she even goes in. Vivian is the one person who’ll flat out tell Theodore that she’s seen the medals already, and makes little effort to hide the impatient puff of air that emerges from her nose. In the past, Theodore would have reacted to his mother’s impatience in one way or another, even just a word or two. Since his illness, though, he merely presses forward.
Even this one? The Monteverdi?
A simple
Yes, Theodore
is rarely enough to stop him from asking about the Mahler, and the Brahms as well, sometimes even the Chopin and the Liszt, at which point Vivian’s discomfort overtakes her and she excuses herself from the room. Vivian operates at a pretty high level of denial where unpleasant things are concerned.

These days, Theodore’s interests lean toward the lights around the fish pond, the ongoing nature show in their yard (the rest of the family also enjoys the occasional
Oh, look at the deer
moment, but Theodore can sit and look out the window for hours), and piles of rocks, in which he sees many things. Around the holidays last year, he discovered a rock that looked somewhat like Mary holding the baby Jesus (it actually does), and made it the centerpiece of a diorama he crafted out of an empty checkbook box, featuring a crèche of rocks representing Joseph, the wise men, and a sheep. All but the Mary and the baby Jesus are a bit of a stretch to anyone else, but Theodore is more than happy to point out the turbans on the wise men, the rock representing the frankincense (he’s still searching for the perfect myrrh), and so forth. (This interest in the manger scene represents no special religious concern on Theodore’s part. He just sees what he sees.) Studying, developing, and displaying this crèche has occupied more hours than is possible to tally, but it’s hard to imagine anyone but Theodore, or maybe a geologist, taking quite this much interest in a box of rocks. If there’s any upside to this for anyone, especially Theodore, it’s that he truly seems no less happy than he ever did—and Theodore has always been a happy, contented individual.

VIVIAN, A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, has a tendency to gossip and make sideways comments passed off as truth.
What?
She’s just making observations. Well, she never. She’s the 1912 model of Priscilla. Five-foot-one in her youth, she’s now four-foot-nine, ninety-eight years old. Vivian likes to tell people how old she is, has been doing this since she was about eighty. (Before that, she would have said it was
improper
for a woman to reveal her age. After she turned eighty, she quickly realized how impressed people were with how fantastic she looked, how vital she still was, and how much mileage she could get out of it. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t look eighty—though Vivian didn’t think that—just that she was as full of life and put-together as ever.) Loves, loves, loves attention, is used to getting it, has been since she was an eligible young bachelorette. Will leave the room if attention’s not on her for more than a few minutes. Will pay attention to you for as long as it takes for her to determine if something about you reflects well on her. Say, if you’re a person of some means, some social distinction. Tells stories, most about herself, one or two about others in the family. (She still beams with pride telling the one about a luncheon she’d held, after which she’d written in Theodore’s baby book, “Theodore hilarious.” At one time, the story included the actual hilarious thing he’d said, but after fifty years she’d finally forgotten it, and the story mutated into something that was more Vivian-centric involving the suit from Carson Pirie Scott she’d worn and what she’d prepared for lunch that day, though “Theodore hilarious” always remained its climax.) When Theodore went to college to study music and photography, Vivian spent four years telling people who asked that her son was just
having a little whim
before he went to work at the jewelry store. She had taken great pride in being the wife of a prominent jeweler, and after Theodore dropped the jewelry business for optometry, she took to beginning her sentences,
If you’d only gone into the jewelry business . . .
In Theodore’s better days, he often finished it for her.
I wouldn’t have been as happy, Mother.
Vivian generally replied with an uncomfortable chuckle.
Oh well, yes, of course, but still . . .

So if Vivian’s about to launch into a story about a member of the family, chances are it happened when that person was a baby. Priscilla, for instance, is way beyond tired of the story about how quietly and perfectly she laid on a blanket as a baby. (All Priscilla can figure is that her great-grandmother repeats the Priscilla Lays Quietly On A Fucking Blanket story because it didn’t happen often. Even Priscilla knows that much about herself. But it’s only partly the case. Vivian does repeat it because she’s easily impressed by well-behaved children, and on that day, Vivian had found Priscilla laying on this baby blanket about twenty minutes after she’d exhausted herself screaming. Vivian hadn’t witnessed that part of it, and was charmed by Priscilla’s momentary fascination with a crystal paperweight and the reflections it was making around the room. Still, Priscilla thought, had she done nothing that her great-grandmother admired since lying still on a blanket before she could even walk? Not even fucking
walking
?
Gah
.)

Otherwise, Vivian’s stories tend to be about Vivian. She has about fifteen stories in permanent rotation, and the grooves have worn deep. Was a minister’s daughter, positively hated Sunday services, hated moving around, hated not knowing where they’d be from one year to the next, went to twelve schools in ten years. The year she was six, her father moved ahead of the family; she came home from school one day and her father was gone, and all she was told was that he’d been “called” and that they’d meet him soon. Never went to church again after she got married, never moved again once they bought their own home. Has wonderful memories of childhood, wonderful memories, oh yes, they didn’t have very much money at all, you see, on her father’s salary, but they made do, raised their own chickens, her mother taught her to bake. Only had one birthday party ever, her seventh. Was engaged twice before she met her future husband, Baron, gave the rings back,
of course
. Heavens. No proper young lady would keep such things. Was on the women’s swim team in college. Was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. Jean has been seen mouthing the words to Vivian’s stories along with her behind her back.