Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)

by Lorna Landvik

  MOM’S UPRIGHT (AND NOT UPTIGHT) POPOVERS

  2 eggs

  1 cup milk

  1 cup flour

  1 T butter

  ¼ t salt

  Beat eggs, milk, and butter. Sift flour and salt; add to egg mixture, beating until smooth. Pour into well-greased muffin or popover tin. Bake 15 minutes at 475 degrees; reduce heat to 350 degrees, and bake 25 minutes. Prick with fork before serving to let out steam. Enjoy!

  13

  Haze and Bill’s affair lasted more than three years, and no one, as far as they knew, ever got hurt. Except Haze, and she would never admit it to anyone, because she had no right to. Which made her think Bill might feel the same way, which in that case made two people who got hurt.

  Haze wrote in her journal:

  But Helen, I got hurt loving Royal. Love doesn’t exactly immunize you from hurt, in fact it sort of ensures it. But at least Eleanor never (as far as we know) found out. As far as we know, we were as clever as John le Carré spies, not doing anything to raise suspicion, covering all tracks that needed to be covered . . .

  Susan, Bill’s granddaughter, came from California to spend the summer with her grandparents, but her curfew was fairly early, and she was asleep—or at least in her room—by the time Bill indulged in one of his late-night walks that led to Haze’s house.

  Bill put Susan to work in the office, and she eagerly assumed her duties as an all-around gofer. A curious and inquisitive girl, she had a reverence for the written word, which of course endeared her to Haze.

  “She loved my column about old radio programs,” said Haze one night as she and Bill lay in the guest-room bed. “I wonder how many other thirteen-year-olds would have read that column!”

  “She’s a jewel,” said Bill. “If her dad had showed a tenth of the interest Susan seems to show for the paper, well, I wouldn’t have to worry who I’m going to hand the reins to.”

  “So it’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition?”

  “What?”

  Haze laughed. “That’s what I heard Susan ask Mitch. We were in the break room, and she was reading aloud that story about the fire at Belgum’s resort. One of the sentences ended with a preposition.”

  Bill chuckled. “What did Mitch say?”

  “The perfect thing. ‘Rules of grammar are beautiful things, but they’re also flexible things.’”

  “I’m going to give that man a raise.”

  HAZE HAD TAKEN SUSAN UNDER HER WING. She took her out for lunch at the Sundown, answered her questions about where she got her column ideas and what she did when she didn’t have any.

  “I go outside,” Haze had said. “I look around and find someone to talk to. Oops—there’s a preposition at the end of my sentence.”

  The girl blushed. “Sorry. That comes from my English teacher, Miss Chavez. She’s sort of hard-core.”

  Susan McGrath’s presence was like higher-wattage bulbs in the light fixtures; everything brightened up. She was even able to get the usually dour receptionist, Shelly Clausen, to laugh once in a while (an odd, unexpected sound as it was heard so rarely). Most importantly, her enthusiasm reminded everyone why they were in the newspaper business in the first place, and it was always nice to remember that what you were doing was necessary, needed, and sometimes even noble.

  Susan came back the next summer, when she was fourteen, the summer Eleanor was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

  Haze herself had been focused on her own ovaries, which weren’t cancerous but had been busy doing their job, which was to excrete eggs . . . one of which happened to be fertilized and decided to stick around.

  When her first period stalled, she didn’t pay much attention; Haze’s cycle wasn’t strictly bound to any exact calendar number, and she and Bill were meticulous about using condoms, but when her second period failed to make an appearance, she began to wonder . . . Could I be?

  She gave a fake name at a clinic in Minneapolis (not that they’d recognize the small-town columnist, but why take chances), and when her pregnancy was confirmed, she drove home, entertaining herself with fantasies of what life was going to be with this new baby, so excited that when she got inside her house, she almost called Lois, but she had kept her affair with Bill a secret even from her best friend and didn’t think she could spring news of a baby, let alone its parentage, in one phone call. If a hidden camera had been installed in Haze’s home, it would have shown a woman dancing through rooms, cackling, would have shown a woman who looked like she was starring in a training film for DEA personnel—she obviously was high on something.

  Bill had been in a series of meetings the next day, and Haze was glad; it eased the strong temptation of waltzing into his office to announce, “Guess what, Bill? I’m having your baby!”

  When he joined a half-dozen Gazette employees at the Sundown for Happy Tea, Haze was tickled to be in a booth full of people with him, sitting on her secret like a hen warming an egg. When everyone had gone home, leaving them alone in the big red booth, Haze practically thrummed with excitement, but before she could tell Bill her big news—their big news—anguished words rushed out of her lover’s mouth.

  “Haze, Eleanor’s got cancer. Ovarian cancer. We just found out.”

  Watching him take a big slug of beer and feeling everything inside her crumple, Haze whispered, “Oh, Bill. Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “She’s really going to need me now.”

  “Of course she is,” said Haze, and unable to touch one another in the public place, they slouched in misery.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you two?” asked Jules, bussing their table. “Somebody get fired?”

  “You will be,” said Haze, “if you keep serving those deep-fried mushrooms.”

  “Ha ha,” said Jules. “They’re one of our biggest sellers. And I can’t be fired, I own the joint.”

  “A lucky technicality for you,” said Bill.

  Making little jokes was all they could do, and their pretense of mild good cheer continued until the bill was paid.

  “I should get home,” said Bill, as they stood out in front of the Sundown, trying to look like casual co-workers saying their good-nights.

  “Of course,” said Haze. “Of course.”

  SHE CRUMPLED ONTO HER BED—not the guest-room bed she and Bill shared, but hers and Royal’s bed, the one she always slept in and the one Briggy always slept next to.

  How could she have been so stupid? A baby with Bill. A genial divorce for him and Eleanor, who would understand Haze and Bill were powerless in the power of their love. Maybe they’d build a house out near Kingleigh Lake, one whose backyard faced the east so that Haze and the baby could watch the sunrise during early morning feedings, and with a big porch on the west side so she and Bill could watch the sunset, quietly discussing what astonishingly smart thing their baby had done that day—how pretty she was (Haze knew it was going to be a girl), how they would start her on piano for a musical foundation, but if she wanted to switch to saxophone or guitar, they’d certainly let her!

  But now, after hearing that terrible news about Eleanor, Haze realized how silly, how girlish, how utterly rickety and unsustainable her fantasies had been. She lay in her bed as panic ebbed and flowed in her like a rapacious tide, but before that tide threw her against rocky shoals, Haze, understanding her therapy, sat up, took out her notebook from the nightstand drawer and began to write, her pen scratching against the paper as if it were trying to dig up something hidden, which of course is why she wrote.

  July 3, 1976

  Dear Helen,

  It’s been so easy to carry on with Bill. Okay, I’m feeling wild, feeling like control is something I’m aware of, but not something I’m necessarily possessed of, but even in this crazy, scary state, my editorial eye squints at my first sentence. “So easy to ‘carry on’ with Bill”? “Carry on”? What does that mean?

  I knew it was wrong from the start. At least I thought I should know it was wrong from the start, but it’s awfully e
asy to rationalize something that seems so right. And honestly, I know Royal would approve! (My heart races as I write that, not as some sort of fluttering lie detector needle indicating “liar! liar!” but as the reverse: it’s beating hard at the truth.)

  If our love was a pie chart (okay, now I know I’m crazy) divided into three parts delineating why it should exist, the first part would be “Because it would make Royal happy.”

  As absurd as it sounds, that is a deep and incontrovertible truth. I knew Royal as my husband, and Bill knew Royal as one of his best friends, and we both knew that his heart was wide-open and willing to accept love in all its beautiful, messy manifestations. Royal loved me, and he loved Bill, and he’d only want what made us happy.

  “But adultery is wrong,” I said to Bill in one of the many discussions we had about what we were doing. (The sex was nice—okay, really nice—but even nicer were all the long, deep, and meandering conversations we had. Sometimes I was happier when we finished making love, just so we could get to the pillow talk.)

  “It is,” Bill had agreed. “But sometimes it’s okay to be wrong.”

  On my side of the bed, there was a pillow on the floor, thrown off in the hurly-burly of what we’d been doing under the covers, and I grabbed it and smacked Bill with it.

  “I'm just quoting Royal,” said Bill. “Who did add this caveat—‘of course, not in the operating room.’”

  The second wedge on the pie chart would read, “Because it makes us happy.”

  After Royal died, happiness was a state of being that I wasn’t sure I’d ever again experience, but when it came to me, I welcomed it with open arms. I felt like a person near drowning who manages to paddle up through the dark, dank water and, bursting through, takes a big gulp of air and shouts, “yes!”

  The third wedge of pie would be called, “Unknown.” But really, when I think of it, maybe that’s really what the whole pie is made of. I’ve always thought I had a strong moral compass, where you know there’s a true north, but what happens when the needle points to “Are You Sure?” or “What about This?”

  I know Eleanor didn’t deserve to be cheated on, but I also know I didn’t deserve to be widowed, and I did deserve to find love where I found it.

  (I wish Bill had left his Pall Malls here; after reading that last sentence, I have a need to fire up a match and breathe in the cigarette’s noxiousness and exhale it out.)

  We are all such tender flowers—some of us are perennials (and for the longest time, I thought I was one) who get to bloom year after year, unimpeded by drought or bugs, too much sun, or too much shade—and the rest of us are annuals—so pretty and confident as we unfurl our petals, unaware that next season, we might not come up at all. This is all I know: I was lying fallow and was convinced that I was going to be weeded out of this garden of beauty, and then Bill came along and said, “Hey, I’ll tend you, I value your poor withered leaves, I’ll help them grow.” What would you do? Would you think, “Nope, I’ll just die here on the vine,” or would you think, “No, no, I want to live!”?

  I looked at Eleanor as a flower too, with Bill tending to her, but I also thought, hey, that gardener can take care of more than one plant! Of course I had to then think, what would I have done if Royal felt a need to take care of more than one garden?

  I have no answer. There is no answer. I’ve been terribly wrong, and I’ve been terribly right.

  More than anything, I want a baby. I wanted Royal to be the father of him/her but he wasn’t. That never happened. But now there’s a baby and her (I just know it’s a her) father is married, and he’s got teenaged grandchildren! But somehow we’ll make it work, because more than anything, I’m our baby’s mother.

  SHE DIDN’T TELL BILL the next day at work because he didn’t come into work. She was going to tell him and in fact had it all planned out; at five thirty, after everyone had left, she would go into Bill’s office. She wouldn’t sit on his desk, as she often did—that was too flirty, too suggestive. Instead, she’d sit on the black leather chair facing his desk and, hands folded primly on her lap and in a clear and unwavering voice, she would tell him that she was carrying his child and that she hoped he would be happy about it, but if not, she understood. She didn’t know where their relationship would go from here; she wasn’t expecting him to divorce Eleanor—especially not now, when she was so sick—but she also hoped he’d acknowledge the baby as his own . . .

  What Haze really wanted was some magic, happy-ending solution that would erase scandal and hurt, a happy-ending solution that would make everything all right.

  “As if that’s going to happen,” she muttered to herself, throwing the vinyl cover over her Selectric, and as she exited her office, she jumped, hand splayed out over her chest.

  “Goodness, Susan, you surprised me!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Haze, I was just getting my purse. I was halfway to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and I realized I forgot my purse! Pretty dumb, huh?”

  “Who hasn’t forgotten their purse at some—” began Haze, but her words were cut short by the girl’s wail.

  “Did you hear about my grandma? Did you hear she’s got cancer!” The last word Susan managed to cry out in two different octaves.

  Haze nodded, and uninvited but certainly welcomed, Susan fell into her arms.

  “DO YOU LIKE CHIPPED BEEF ON TOAST?” asked Haze.

  “I don’t know,” said Susan, “I’ve never had it.”

  “Then it’ll be a pleasant surprise.” With a wooden spoon, Haze pushed the puffed-up plastic bag under the boiling water. “My mother used to make it from scratch, but this Stouffer’s isn’t too bad. Did you call your grandparents?”

  Susan sniffed. “Grandma said it’s awfully nice of you to make me dinner. She also said I should mind my manners and offer to help.”

  “With frozen food, there’s not much to do. Although you could get some bread from the bread box and put it in the toaster.”

  All Haze could think to do when Susan had crumpled in her arms was to take her home and offer her dinner, happy to provide aid and comfort to the girl, even as she needed aid and comfort herself.

  They sat at Haze’s small dinette table, eating chipped beef on toast and sliced garden tomatoes, talking about Susan’s school in Santa Monica and how they took field trips to the oceanside and celebrated birthday parties on the pier.

  “I’ve never been to California,” said Haze.

  “Oh, you’d love it,” said Susan, licking a spot of cream sauce off her upper lip. “We’ve got a grapefruit and a lemon tree in our backyard, and it’s only an hour to Disneyland, and when I get my permit, my dad’s going to let me drive up the Coast Highway all the way to Santa Barbara!”

  “Santa Barbara,” said Haze. “I’ll bet it’s as lovely as it sounds.”

  Except for the scrape of silverware, they ate quietly for a while, until Haze closed her eyes and moaned in response to the perfect red freshness of her tomato slice.

  “They are good,” said Susan, delicately cutting a neat triangle of tomato. “My friend Mandy—her mom writes for the TV show Harry’s Home!—have you seen it? It’s kind of funny, about a guy whose family sort of takes advantage of him . . . Anyway, Mandy eats her tomatoes with sugar—ick! Why would you do that when it’s so good with salt?”

  She offered a lopsided smile that held both hopefulness and apology.

  “Sorry. I know I sound like a jerk, babbling on and on about dumb stuff. I just—if I don’t talk about dumb stuff, I’ll talk about my grandma, and I’m just too scared to do that.”

  Haze nodded. “I only knew one grandmother, my mother’s mother, and she was . . . well, she was sort of mean. She was the first in her family to ever go to college—a teacher’s college—and she taught until she got married. Then they wouldn’t let her teach anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Teachers used to have to be single. Just like airline stewardesses. When they got married, their careers were over.”

&
nbsp; “That’s crazy!” said Susan.

  Haze nodded. “And she was always bitter, I think, because of that. She’d loved teaching. My mother said Grandma often told her it was the happiest time of her life . . . which didn’t make my mother feel too good.”

  “I can see why.”

  “My brother and sister and I hated going to her house,” said Haze. “It felt like punishment. Fortunately, she lived a state away—in Montana—and we only had to see her twice a year.”

  Haze smiled, but her emotions took a sudden sharp turn, and tears sparked in her eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said, dabbing the corner of her eye with her ring finger. “It’s just that now I can see why she was so unhappy—she didn’t get to choose her life.”

  “We studied the suffragette movement in school, and one day Sherri Clark—the most popular girl in my class—said that women’s lib was nothing but a bunch of angry, bra-burning women who didn’t shave their pits.” Susan rolled her eyes. “And everyone laughed.”

  “I bet you didn’t.”

  “It felt like I was supposed to, but I didn’t.”

  “Good for you.” Haze patted her mouth with her napkin. “You give me hope for the future.”

  “Are you scared about the future?”

  The girl asked the question with such intensity that had she still been eating, Haze might have choked. As it was, she swallowed hard.

  “Not scared . . . but sometimes . . . worried.”

  Susan nodded. “I know. It makes you not believe in evolution.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, isn’t evolution like a march—step by step, moving forward—toward improvement? And sometimes it seems like we step backwards. Or not just step backwards but fall backwards.”

  Tapping her fork against her plate, Haze regarded Susan.

  “You’re a precocious one, aren’t you?”

  Susan shrugged.

  “But I’m sure you’ve heard that before, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.”