“You’d better go back to your owner,” Lois said, now firm and scolding, where a minute earlier she had been nervously jabbering about an upcoming blind date her cousin had set up for her—“Just my luck I get someone like Freddy Krueger!”
The dog offered another crazy smile (had he been listening to Lois?), and showing him our seriousness, we sped up, arms pumping. He kept apace.
Then Mother Nature intervened, deciding to throw a quick sleet shower at us. The dog sprinted along with us toward my car, and when I opened the driver’s side door, he jumped in with the assurance of a medal winner hopping up to the awards podium.
He politely sat in the passenger’s seat, and Lois, grumbling about how she thought she had dibs on that, got into the back seat, and I, a bit flummoxed, did the only thing I could think to do: I turned the ignition key.
At home, he didn’t squirm or fidget as I toweled him off in my kitchen, and I could hardly eat my dinner without offering him some of last night’s meat loaf.
He snuggled by my side on the couch as I read about what Reagan’s reelection means to America in Time magazine (I’m still steamed that our Minnesota boy, Walter Mondale, AND the first female vice-presidential candidate didn’t win), and later, as I was brushing my teeth and slapping on cold cream, he let me know with one single yip that he needed to go outside.
I placed a cushion at the foot of my bed and didn’t give into that goofy smile, which I knew was a request to hop on up, and after a few wags of his tail, which I failed to be seduced by, he settled onto the cushion, where he slept the whole night.
We visited John Draper, the vet on Summer Street, who after calling the pound (there were no reports from an owner of a lost dog matching this one’s description), examined the pooch, gave him a few shots, and had his assistant Jody engrave a dog tag that said “Howdy.”
He texts/doesn’t send to Elise: “I’M GOING TO ASK MOM FOR A DOG.”
19
July 14, 1985
Today I turned fifty! Throughout the years, I’ve taken note of famous people who share the same birth year—1935—as me. It was a pretty good year, one that produced people with all sorts of voices: musical, Elvis Presley and Julie Andrews; literary, Ken Kesey; comic, Woody Allen; and enlightened, the Dalai Lama.
Fifty sounds so old, and how did it get to be the mideighties when it seems the seventies were just a couple months back and the swinging sixties swung only a year or so ago?
This is the first birthday I’ve had without the person who’s responsible for bringing me into the world all those decades ago—my mother. As I’ve previously written, she died last winter after a long illness. Because it was her desire to be the first to wish me a happy birthday, I always got a 5:30 a.m. phone call from her. I’m a fairly early riser but not that early. Yet even when my birthday fell on a Saturday or Sunday, I loved getting that call.
There are so many things you miss about a loving mother, especially on the first birthday you have without her.
She was a master cake baker, and her creations were not just oohed and aahed over by other kids at my birthday parties, but requested by those kids’ mothers for their own celebrations. Butterflies, ballerinas, panda bears, fancy hats, a miniature farmyard—she not only accepted any request I made but far exceeded my own ideas as to how it might look. She was an artist who sculpted in cake and painted in frosting. I’ve written about what a fine seamstress she was and how she’d create me Paris (or at least Fargo) runway-suitable clothes; now there are TV shows about cake artists and fashion designers, both of which my mother was, although her artistry was confined to her bedroom, where her old Pfaff sewing machine was, and the kitchen.
The Creative Arts Building is the first place I visit when I go to our wondrous state fair, as it displays hundreds of handmade quilts, embroidered tablecloths, hand-smocked baby clothes, knit sweaters, hand-painted plaques and mailboxes, latticed blueberry pies, sprinkled cupcakes, and crumbly coffee cakes. I love these exhibits because they honor the impulse—the need—to be creative and artistic.
As my birthday present to you, here’s
MOM’S THREE WAYS TO ENJOY CHOCOLATE
2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
½ cup milk
¼ scant cup corn syrup
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
In a saucepan, mix the first two ingredients; add everything but vanilla. Cook to boiling, then boil for 3 minutes, being careful not to scorch. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla.
Variations
1. Ice cream topping: It’s ready as soon as you stir in the vanilla! Pour over ice cream; it’ll harden.
2. Sheet cake frosting: After stirring in vanilla, beat with a wooden spoon for two to three minutes before spreading thickened frosting on cake.
3. Fudge: After stirring in vanilla, beat with a wooden spoon for three to four minutes or until your biceps cry “Uncle!” Spread out on a large platter, and cut into squares.
“Happy birthday, honey!”
“Happy birthday, son!”
“Yo, Jack. Happy birthday!”
Sam can’t believe it. He’s on the verge of tears; what a wuss! But it’s been so long since he’s sat so close to both of his parents, and now, watching his happy, world-traveling brother wave, he has to swallow hard and yell at himself to “man up!”
“Thanks!” says Jack. “A bunch of people sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me at the hostel—all in English, even though there’s only one other American!”
“Where are you now?” asks Sam.
“Prague,” says Jack. “Just got in yesterday. It’s beautiful!”
“So are you, honey!” says Susan. “I love your hair!”
Jack poses, patting his longish, curling hair, and thanks them again.
“I love yours too, Mom!”
It had been Sam’s idea to stop at GC Marine & Recreation so that they all could wish Jack a happy birthday together.
“Come on, just think how much it would mean to Jack—and to Dad.”
They had found Phil not in the trailer that served as his office, but cleaning the cockpit of a cabin cruiser. His look of surprise quickly changed to worry, and he asked if everything was all right.
Now they’re all facing the phone, propped up on the boat’s (sparkling clean) windshield, Sam squatting between the leather seats on which his parents sit.
“Where’re you off to next?” Phil asks. Sam notes with some amusement that like his mother, his dad leans toward the cell phone when he talks, his voice raised, the way older people think they need to when talking what they call “long distance.”
“I don’t really know,” says Jack. “There’s this German guy who’s got a car and is heading up to Warsaw . . . but I think I’ll be going south. Working my way toward Greece.”
“Please be careful,” says Susan.
Jack laughs. “Really, Mom? You want me to be careful? Huh, I’ve never heard that before.”
Sam looks at his mother, whose big smile and flushed face make her look . . . well, pretty. He wonders if his dad thinks the same thing.
Jack goes on about the clean and efficient trains, about the gypsies that hang out at the stations, about an Italian girl he met who’s going to Purdue University next year.
“She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he says. “And she’s going to study aerospace engineering! She wants to be an astronaut!”
“Do they have Italian astronauts?” asks Susan. Even though it seems a perfectly valid question, it sounds like a dumb one.
When they hang up—Jack’s idea because he’s going out to a club with new friends—Sam stands up from the squat he’s been in, stretching his arms over his head.
“Hey, can I go down below?”
“Be my guest,” says his dad.
After Sam descends below deck, Phil thanks Susan for including him in on the birthday call.
“It was Sam’s idea,” says Susan. Surprised at her tone
of voice—why did she have to sound so snippy?—she apologizes.
“That’s okay,” says Phil, and after a moment, he adds, “Sam’s a good kid.”
“He is,” agrees Susan. “He, uh . . . well, I think the job has really been good for him. He even asked if he can work at the paper after school starts.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I said sure. I mean, I think he could handle both his schoolwork and a little part-time job. Don’t you?”
Staring, as if mesmerized by the speedometer gauge on the boat’s dashboard, he finally nods.
“Phil,” says Susan, reaching out to touch his arm. “Are you okay?”
When he turns to her, his face is sad.
“It’s just that—well, Sam didn’t tell me he wanted to keep working at the paper. He . . . he doesn’t tell me much of anything.”
“You just have to keep asking him things.” Again, Susan hears a tone of impatience in her voice that she doesn’t like, and adds, “At least that’s what works for me. I keep bugging him until he finally talks just to shut me up!”
Phil gives her a grateful smile.
“That is the truth,” says Susan quietly. “At least partially. But I find what’s really made a difference between us—what’s sort of opened up the line of communication—is Sam helping with Haze’s columns.” She swallows hard. “Did he tell you about her and my grandfather?”
Phil shakes his head, and his look of surprise increases as Susan tells him about the love affair between Haze and Bill.
Below deck, there’s not much floor space in between the berth and the door, but enough for Sam to get down on it. He does twenty-five sit-ups and six (up from four!) push-ups before flipping over, lying on the carpet patterned with anchors. Not wanting to interrupt any conversation (hopefully a good one, but he’s heartened that they’re having one at all), he won’t go back on deck until his parents call for him. With the pillow of his entwined hands under his head, he stares up at the ceiling.
Who invented the technology, he wonders, that lets him see his brother on a phone screen all the way from Prague? (Where the hell is Prague anyway?) Should he grow his hair out like Jack’s? Would his be curly too? What makes hair curly anyway?
He imagines the beautiful Italian girl who wants to be an astronaut and reminds himself to look up whether Italy has a space program.
Sitting up, he digs in his pocket for his phone, and fingers flying over the screen, he texts/doesn’t send Elise, “BELOW DECK ON BOAT. WANNA COME SAIL AWAY WITH ME?”
Part Four
20
“So I shouldn’t be worried that Sam got Al Henning for history?” asks Susan.
“Why should you be?” says her friend Liz.
“Sam says he’s a really tough grader. He says the highest grade he’s ever given was a B minus.”
“High school mythology. Al’s tough, but he’s a good teacher. Sam’s got history right before my class, and I haven’t noticed him coming in traumatized.” She pauses for a moment. “How’s your face feeling?”
“Really tight,” says Susan. “If you could see me, you’d see that I’m barely moving my mouth.”
“What’d you say? I can hardly understand you—you must barely be moving your mouth.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” says Susan. “My whole face will crack if I do.”
The idea of their faces cracking of course cracks them up, but they try to temper any damage by pursing their mouths, their laughter coming out in a volley of tight-lipped “ho ho hos.”
Wearing masks of hardening blue clay, they are in a dimly lit room, lying under thin lavender-infused blankets, spending the two-for-one spa day certificate that Liz won in a PTA silent auction fund-raiser. After massages and mani-pedis, they are finally alone, away from the earnest staff, whose names are stitched in pretty calligraphy on the breast pockets of their white doctorly coats.
“So tell me again how I have nothing to worry about with Sam,” says Susan.
“You have everything to worry about,” says Liz. “He’s a freshman in high school!”
Susan warns her friend not to make her laugh again, as she wants the full “revitalization and renewal” benefits the esthetician promised the facial would give.
“But really, Susan, you’d be so proud of him. He was like a student teacher Wednesday, practically leading the whole discussion. I was . . . superfluous, I could have gone down to the teachers’ lounge for a smoke.”
“If you smoked,” says Susan, and tries to corral the smile that wants to break through her clay mask. She had been thrilled that Sam got her good friend as his English teacher, and more thrilled when Liz called her three days into the start of the school year.
“I’d asked the kids to bring in an example of a writer with a strong voice, and Sam read a column Haze had written. I tell you, Susan, the kids were so engaged, not only listening to Sam but discussing the topic afterward. It was beautiful.”
That had led to her incorporating Haze’s columns into their journalism curriculum, and the two “Radical Hag Wednesday” readings and discussions they had had so far had proved to be fifty-five minutes of thoughtful, passionate, and illuminating debate.
The music in the spa room is low and new-agey, and Susan can’t tell if she’s listening to gongs or whales, and when she expresses this to her friend, Liz says, “I think it’s gongs. Or maybe monks chanting.”
Whatever it is, and despite the shrunken-head tightness of her face, Susan feels more relaxed than she can remember.
“Liz,” she says, “I’m going to tell you something, something in confidence, that Sam found out about Haze.”
“I’m all ears,” says Liz, and as she hears about the affair Haze had with Susan’s grandfather, her eyes grow as wide as the mask will allow.
When Susan’s finished telling the story, there is such a long silence that she says, “Liz? Please tell me you’re awake.”
“Of course I am,” whispers Liz. “I guess I’m just . . . well, stunned.”
“Imagine how I felt. And please know this is just between you and me.”
“Of course. My God. What was Sam’s reaction?”
Blinking hard—Susan doesn’t want the salt water of her tears to somehow undo any of the mask’s “revitalization and renewal”—she says, “Of course, we were both shocked. But honestly, Liz, Sam seems to have gotten so mature lately. I can’t believe that we’ve been able to talk about something so . . . intimate. And he’s been so sensitive; he really seems to understand how betrayed I felt for my grandmother. He’s a lot more forgiving, but of course he never knew either of my grandparents. They were gone long before he was born.”
“Sam’s always been a thoughtful kid.”
Susan nods and again feels the prickle of tears; of course he has been; it was just hard for her to remember that when he acted out all his hurt and anger over Phil’s and her split. She takes a deep breath.
“And then after Sam read a column about Haze’s dog dying, he wondered if she wrote anything about when my grandfather died. She did, and he brought the column into my office yesterday.”
“Oh, wow! What’d it—”
Liz is interrupted by the door opening and a chirpy voice saying, “Good afternoon, ladies. Time to unmask!”
October 11, 1994
The pews at St. John’s by the Lake filled up early, and ushers had to set up folding chairs in the narthex to accommodate all the mourners. It was a beautiful funeral, befitting a man much beloved, admired, and respected in our community, Mr. William Adam McGrath, the former publisher of the Granite Creek Gazette.
“He understood the seriousness of providing readers with a diversity of voices,” said Pat Gaines, who had run the op-ed page for four years before moving on to the Sacramento Bee. “Bill thought everyone’s voice was worthy of, if not agreement, then at least respect.”
Louis Hagman, who’d served on the downtown council with Bill, said, “Every time you sit in the little gazebo
on the south side of the square, think of Bill. It was his idea to build it—and how many marriage proposals have taken place there? Every time you see a show or concert at the Palace, think of Bill—he spearheaded the fund-raising that allowed us to refurbish it. When you think of Granite Creek’s motto—‘The Town That Can’—think of Bill, because he came up with it.”
I did not know that, but there were a lot of things I realized I didn’t know listening to the eulogies. Bill McGrath cut a wide swath.
Susan McGrath gave the final eulogy, and in it, she described the man who was not only her grandfather but her mentor, guiding her with patience and love but “unafraid to crack the whip when the whip needed to be cracked.”
As many of you know, Bill remained at the helm of the Gazette for nearly fifty years, and although he’d long retired by the time his beloved granddaughter Susan took over, he sent her daily e-mails.
“Sometimes he’d send jokes, sometimes inspirational stories, sometimes profiles of people he admired, what was new in technology, or medicine,” Susan said. “They were never intrusive; I was always happy to open an e-mail with the subject line he always used, ‘You’re Doing Swell.’”
With a change of tense, his family, his many friends, colleagues, and fellow citizens say the same to the great and good man that was William Adam McGrath: You did swell.
Both Susan and Sam had sat quietly for a long moment before Susan leaned back in the same chair her grandfather had sat in and Sam pushed toward her the box of tissues on her desk.
“Thanks,” said Susan, wiping her eyes.
“I didn’t know he sent you daily e-mails,” said Sam.
“I think he was probably first in line to get an e-mail account.” She blew her nose, an indelicate little honk that made them both laugh. “I saved them all.”
“Could I read them?”
Susan nodded. “I printed them all out and saved them in a folder, just like Haze.”
“It’s weird reading that column knowing what we know about them, isn’t it?” asked Sam. “I tried to, you know, read between the lines, but I didn’t see anything that would make me know that they . . . well, about their past.”
Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) Page 19
