“Now that’s really naive.” She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. “Anyway, what does Dan think about all this?”
“I haven’t told him yet.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I just . . . I don’t know . . . I’m sort of embarrassed by the whole business.”
There was certain family crap that I still felt nervous about sharing with Dan. And though I knew that Margy was right—that it was hypocritical not to let my guy in on the parental dirty linen—there was a part of me that was privately ashamed of all this bad behavior, and was worried that, somehow, it would make Dan think differently of me.
“For Christ’s sakes,” Margy said when I articulated this fear to her, “when will you grow up? You have nothing to be sorry about here. So why don’t you just tell him about it, and you won’t be feeling so guilty about nothing.”
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
But every time I planned to discuss it with him, something stopped me—either Dan seemed too preoccupied, or he was just too tired, or I didn’t think the moment was appropriate. When, a few weeks later, I admitted to Margy that I still hadn’t told him, she rolled her eyes and said, “Well, at this point, I wouldn’t say anything. I mean, it’s not like you betrayed him or anything. You just didn’t want to talk about this. So it’s the first secret you’ve kept from him. It won’t be the last.”
“I still feel guilty about it.”
“Guilt is for nuns.”
Maybe Margy had a point. Maybe I did make far too big a deal about all this. Especially since Dan only seemed to have a passing interest in my family, and was very good at dedicating whatever free time he had to us. More tellingly, my parents seemed to find a way out of the bad place into which they’d tumbled. We cut each other quite a wide berth that autumn. My mom and dad came over once to see the new apartment (and Mom made a predictably catty comment about how I had “such good nesting instincts.”). Dad and I managed only three lunches in the first few months of the fall term (during all of which he hardly mentioned Mom at all). But then, when I came over for Thanksgiving dinner alone (Dan was with his dad in Glens Falls), I immediately noticed a definite change of mood. They were both a little tight when I showed up, laughing at each other’s jokes—and even giving each other the occasional come-on look. It was nice to see, but it left me wondering what had triggered the end of their Cold War. I found out after dinner, when we were finishing the second bottle of wine, and I too was now feeling pleasantly smashed.
“Dorothy had some good news this week,” Dad said.
“Let me tell it,” she said.
“I’m all ears,” I said.
“I’m having a show at the Howard Wise Gallery in Manhattan.”
“Which is one of the best modern art galleries in the city,” my dad added.
“Congratulations,” I said, “but isn’t Milton Braudy annoyed?”
Mom’s lips tightened and immediately I felt like kicking myself.
“Milton Braudy didn’t like the new show, so he dropped me. Happy now?”
“Why would that make me happy?” I asked.
“Well, you evidently take such pleasure in my failure . . .”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You asked me if Milton Braudy rejected me . . .”
“It was an innocent question,” my dad said.
“Bullshit . . . and while you’re at it, stay out of this. This is between her and me.”
“You’re completely overreacting,” I said. “Per usual.”
“How dare you. I never—repeat, never—come down on you about your own little shortcomings . . .”
That last comment caught me like a left to the face. My voice was suddenly raised. I was saying things I’d never said before.
“You never what? All you do is criticize me . . . or make your stupid snide comments about how I never live up to what you . . .”
“You’re just so fucking thin-skinned, Hannah, that you take my occasional caustic comment to be a personal attack . . .”
“That’s because you’re always attacking me . . .”
“No—I am simply trying to push you out of your rut . . .”
“Dorothy . . .” Dad said, pleadingly.
“A rut!” I yelled. “You’re telling me I’m in a rut?”
“You want the truth, here it is: I cannot begin to fathom why, at the age of twenty, you have turned into some milk-and-cookies housewife type.”
“I am not a damn housewife.”
“You even refuse to curse properly. Why can’t you say ‘fucking housewife’ like—”
“Like what? Like some displaced Greenwich Village artist—”
“That’s right—get vicious—”
“That is not vicious. Calling me a housewife, on the other hand—”
“—is an appropriate observation. But hey, if you want to trap yourself in a nice little domestic cul-de-sac with the doctor of your dreams—”
“At least I haven’t cheated on him—”
I stopped myself. Across the table, my father put his face in his hand. My mother simply glowered at me.
“Like whom?” she said, her voice suddenly quiet, but full of menace.
“Drop it, Dorothy,” Dad said.
“Why? Because you told her?”
“Dad told me nothing,” I said. “Voices carry—especially your voice.”
“So go on, big mouth,” Mom said. “Finish the question. Or do you want me to answer it for you, and tell you how many women your father’s fucked over the years, or how many lovers I’ve—”
“Enough!” my father shouted. I stood up and bolted for the front door.
“That’s right, run away from the tough stuff,” my mom yelled after me.
“Haven’t you said enough?” my dad shouted back at her.
I slammed the door behind me, and went charging off down the street, crying. I kept running. It was about thirty-five degrees outside and I had left my coat behind, but there was no way I was going back to get it. I wanted nothing to do with that woman again.
By the time I reached home fifteen minutes later, I was shaking with cold and rage. But my rage was now mixed with a terrible sadness. Mom and I had fought often, but never with such brutality. And her cruelty—though always there, below the surface—had never before erupted with such fury. She’d wanted to wound me badly—and she’d succeeded.
I needed to call Dan in Glens Falls, but I didn’t want to ruin his Thanksgiving by crying on the phone. I half expected a call from my dad. None came. So around eleven that night, I dialed Margy in Manhattan. Her mother answered, initially sounding half awake, then annoyed.
“Margy’s out with friends,” she said sharply.
“Could you please tell her Hannah called?”
“Could you please not phone again at such a ridiculous hour.”
And she hung up.
I threw myself into bed after this. It was time to call it a day.
Margy never called me back—her mother probably didn’t give her the message. But I did ring Dan the next morning.
“You don’t sound good,” he said.
“Pretty hideous evening with my parents.”
“How hideous?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“That bad?”
“Just come home, Dan.”
He didn’t press me for details (that wasn’t Dan’s style). Nor did I want to give him any—because I was still trying to figure out how to explain the fight to him, without having to tell him that I kept assorted family problems from him this summer, and that he was a central part of my mother’s rant against me. My dad, however, helped me work out a way of letting Dan know that a serious rift had developed between my mother and myself.
He showed up that morning around ten minutes after I finished talking to Dan. He looked tired—his eyes bloodshot, his manner uncharacteristically tense. He had my coat slung over one arm.
“You forgot this,”
he said, handing it to me at my front door. “It must have been a cold walk home.”
“I didn’t notice,” I said.
“I’m truly sorry, Hannah.”
“Why? You didn’t say anything horrible to me.”
He looked at me directly.
“You know why I’m sorry.”
Pause. I asked, “Do you want to come in for coffee?”
He nodded.
We went upstairs to the apartment and sat in my kitchen. As the percolator percolated, Dad glanced around.
“This is really a splendid flat. It’s to your credit.”
I smiled an inward smile. My dad—a quiet Anglophile—was probably the only man in Vermont to call an apartment “a flat.”
“I’m glad you approve,” I said. “Mom didn’t.”
“Yes, she did. She told me how impressed she was. But, naturally, she would never tell you such a thing, because that’s how she is, and we’ve talked about this before, and you know it isn’t going to change, so—”
“Thank you for trying to defend me last night.”
“Your mother went completely over the top. And it was my fault completely.”
“No, I provoked it. If I’d only kept my big mouth shut . . .”
“You weren’t at fault. Dorothy just took things the wrong way, and felt you were taking pleasure in her rejection by Milton Braudy.”
“You know that’s insane. I was simply asking her a question . . .”
“You’re right. You’re utterly right. But your mother is a very proud woman, and she’s now convinced herself that you insulted her and were deliberately cruel. And I know—believe me, I know—that her interpretation of what happened is completely outrageous. And even though I have tried to explain this to her, she won’t see sense.”
This stopped me short.
“What do you mean by that?”
He drummed his fingers on the table, reluctant to speak.
“Come on, Dad . . .”
“I told her I didn’t want to be the messenger . . . that if she was going to make this sort of threat, she should tell you herself—”
“What sort of threat?”
“—but she was adamant that, if I didn’t deliver her message, she simply wouldn’t explain . . .”
“Explain what?”
He put his hand over his face.
“That she refuses to talk to you until you apologize.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded.
“She can’t be serious.”
“Right now, I think she’s deadly serious. Then again, it’s just the morning after. She hardly slept at all, and I want to believe that her overreaction is just an extreme response to a family quarrel that got out of hand. So give it a day or two . . .”
“Dad, I am not apologizing. Tell her from me: there is no way I am saying sorry.”
“I don’t want to be the messenger again.”
“Well, you agreed to do it for her . . . you can now do it for me. That’s the least you owe me.”
Dad looked away. I immediately felt awful.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean that.”
“I think you did—and I deserve it.”
“Are you going to leave her?”
He shrugged.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The woman I saw you with in Boston.”
Now it was Dad’s turn to look appalled.
“You saw me with—”
“A woman, around thirty, long brown hair, very slender, very attractive, talking with you in a very up close way at the hotel after the rally, and then suddenly squeezing your hand. It happened just when I came into the room where the press conference was being held. You didn’t see me come in. Which meant that I happened upon this little scene, unobserved.”
“Oh shit . . .” he said in a half whisper.
“So what’s her name?”
“Molly . . . Molly Stephenson. She’s a fellow at Harvard. She writes regularly for The Nation.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d be cheating on Mom with a hairdresser. Is it serious?”
“It was . . . for a while.”
“And now?”
“I ended it. Reluctantly.”
“Were you in love?”
He met my gaze.
“It was a fling . . . yet one which developed into something more serious than either of us expected.”
“But you stopped it . . . to stay with Mom?”
Another quiet nod.
“And what about her little adventures?” I asked.
“Inconsequential.”
“Didn’t they bother you?”
“It’s hard to take a moral stance on these things when you yourself—”
He broke off.
“I’m truly sorry, Hannah.”
“You’ve said that already.”
“I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said.
“I’m not angry at you. I’m not pleased, but . . . I sort of understand. She’s fucking impossible.”
My father looked genuinely surprised. It was the first time I had ever used that word in front of him.
“I’m pretty impossible too,” he said.
“Not from where I sit.”
“I’m lucky in you.”
“Yeah,” I said, “you are.”
He met my smile, then stood up.
“I’d better get going.”
“The coffee’s ready.”
“I’ve got a stack of papers to grade before everyone gets back Monday. Lunch next week, per usual?”
“Per usual.”
“And I will tell your mother what you said, even though . . .”
“What?”
“Well, to be honest with you, I think it might make things worse.”
“So be it,” I said.
He put on his coat.
“One last thing,” I said. “What do you think I should tell Dan?”
“Whatever you think he needs to know,” he said.
So when Dan came back the next evening, I gave him an edited version of Thanksgiving night. And I felt horrible about only revealing part of the story, and editing out all that adulterous stuff I didn’t want him to hear. But once you set a half-truth in motion, how can you ever come clean without looking like an equivocator . . . someone who hid stuff from view for reasons that even she herself considers shaky? So I simply reduced the blowup to that passing comment about Mom’s ex–art dealer, which in turn sparked off a fight, in which she accused me of being Little Miss Straight . . . a premature housewife.
“Does she think I’m to blame?”
“No, I think she blames me entirely.”
“You don’t have to soft-pedal things for my benefit. I know she doesn’t approve of me.”
“Mom doesn’t approve of anyone.”
“She thinks I’m a stiff.”
“She’s never said that,” I said.
“Now you’re just trying to protect my feelings . . . which really isn’t necessary. Your mom is as transparent as Saran Wrap.”
“I don’t care what she thinks. And if she doesn’t want to talk to me again, that’s fine with me.”
“She’ll talk to you again.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re her only child. She’ll see sense.”
But a week went by and I heard nothing from her. Dad didn’t mention her during our lunch the Wednesday after Thanksgiving—and I didn’t bring her up. When I still hadn’t heard from her after a second week, I mentioned her silence when I met Dad at the diner where we always ate on Wednesday afternoons.
“You didn’t tell me last week if you gave Mom my response to her ultimatum.”
“That’s because you didn’t ask,” he said.
“Well, did you?”
“Of course I did.”
“And what was her reply?”
“Tacit rage.”
“Anything else?”
/>
“Yes. She said, ‘If that’s the way she wants it, fine by me.’”
“How long do you think this will last?”
“I suppose that depends on whether or not you want to speak with her again.”
“Dad, if I apologize to her, I’m essentially telling her it’s all right for her to continue to dump on me.”
“Then don’t apologize. But do understand: she’ll dig her heels in and not talk to you for a very long time.”
“Have you been through this often with her?”
He smiled a sad smile. “What do you think?”
At that moment, I saw my father not as the dynamic, self-assured professor, or the hugely respected and charismatic public man. Instead, he became a sad middle-aged guy locked in a very complex and difficult marriage. And one thing was now very clear to me (something I never really wanted to admit to myself): my mother was something of a monster. An intelligent, talented, witty monster . . . yet a monster nonetheless.
With this realization came the thought . . . or maybe it was the fear: what if she doesn’t speak to me again?
“I really better go,” Dad said. “I have forty essays to get through. By the way, I won’t be able to do lunch next Wednesday. I’m off to Boston for a few days.”
I looked at him directly.
“Business?”
He met my gaze and smiled.
“No. Pleasure.”
After he left, another thought struck me: my father had just confided in me. Not that he ever mentioned he was back seeing Molly Stephenson, although in the weeks leading up to Christmas he was in Boston three times. He never talked about what he got up to down there, and I didn’t ask him either. Nor, to his credit, did he cancel any more of our lunches, as he seemed to work his class and travel schedule around our Wednesday date at the diner. Once, when I told him that he didn’t have to meet me every Wednesday, he was delightfully outraged.
“Not meet you? It’s the highlight of my damn week.”
Intriguingly . . . wonderfully . . . our conversations after the Thanksgiving fiasco did not center around Mom and our ongoing domestic strife. Rather, Dad seemed to want to talk about anything but.
“Have you given any thought to a term abroad yet? You only have a few semesters left.”
“Sure, I’ve thought about it . . .”
“Everyone should spend a little time in Paris.”
In fact, there was a University of Vermont program in France that Margy and I had already looked into, but . . .
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 115
