by Jancee Dunn
She was the only one who could tease my father, and her needling made him less intimidating to us. He was the blustery star, she his affable but perpetually distracted manager. When I would ask her too many personal questions, she would wave me off (“Honestly, you’re the most inquisitive person, it’s not healthy”) so that her inner life was a complete mystery to me—and, I presumed, to my father, who regarded her with muted awe.
I glanced over at him. His lids were drooping as he sprawled on his easy chair. Sometimes he slept with his eyes open. You could never tell, because his gaze was always trained on the TV whether he was awake or not. Ah. He was snoring. I wanted to change the channel, but he had a death clutch on the remote and I didn’t want to wake him.
He dozed through anything except the faint clinking of a spoon on an ice cream bowl, at which time he would snap awake like a snoozing dog who hears a can opener. When I was a kid, he and I had a tacit agreement that when my mother left the TV room to peruse her catalogs, I was to steal into the kitchen to fix him a bowl of ice cream. (“Your mother has got us on a low-sugar diet again,” he would mournfully prompt.) I got up, tiptoed into the kitchen, and opened the freezer. Jammed in among the foil-wrapped parcels that required carbon 14 dating to determine their age and jumbo bags of frozen vegetable medleys (“now with mini-butter pats inside!”) was a lone container of vanilla ice cream, an oasis of sugar among the Healthy Choices.
I made us each a bowl and, for a festive touch, sprinkled on some walnuts. He was awake, of course. “Thanks, honey,” said my father as I handed it to him. Suddenly he heard my mother on the stairs and in one swift motion shoved the bowl underneath his chair.
My mother poked her head into the room. “Has anyone seen my seed catalog?” We both shook our heads.
She looked sharply at the television. “Don, do you even know what you’re watching? Weren’t you just sleeping?”
“My eyes were closed, but I could hear it.”
“How could you hear it over your snoring?” He didn’t say anything and she drifted away. He smiled at me. “That was a close one, eh, kid?”
I grinned back. “That was a close one.” Had I ever gone to college? Had I ever left home, traveled to China after graduation, gotten a job? Had I ever been married at the New York Botanical Garden, squeezing Adam’s hand as a flamboyant justice of the peace named Frankee Love read our carefully nondenominational vows?
As I headed upstairs to bed (stopping first in the kitchen, where three small piles of senior supplement vitamins and three cups of water were lined up on the counter), I remembered I had to phone Vi. She had instructed me to call and let her know I was fine, but the real reason was her need to include me in everything she did. I dialed her private line.
“Grand Central Station, good evening,” Vi sang. “Oh, hello, Lillian. It is just chaotic here!” There was no audible background noise, but Vi thrived on commotion. “Mrs. P and I are getting ready for a card party tomorrow with the girls.” Vi had trouble pronouncing the name of her Portuguese cook, Mrs. Postiga (“Posh-TEE-ga,” the cook kept correcting), so eventually she shortened it. “Mrs. P is making hot tamale pie, a big salad, a rice ring—you know, with the bits of pepper—and what did we decide on dessert, Mrs. P? Right, your marvelous chocolate frosted brownies. Arlene is trying to reduce and she wanted something low-calorie, but I told her absolutely not. She’ll end up licking the plate, like she always does.”
Vi, a comfortable size 12 after years of dieting for Tell Me Everything!, ate with evangelical enthusiasm. “I’d rather have some unfashionable padding than be a sour-face like Arlene,” she said. “You know what I think, Lillian? Self-denial leads to a meanness of spirit. You know me, I gain weight just looking at a Betty Crocker commercial!” She waited a beat for me to laugh. “But I have to have a small dessert every night, or honestly, I wouldn’t want to get up in the morning.”
Ah, the well-polished “joie de vivre” speech.
From Is That Really Me?, Vi’s 1957 book of beauty:
There’s a certain sort of person who will calmly announce, “Why, I was so busy that I forgot to eat lunch today.” Well, that’s the sort of person I don’t care to be around. If I ever skipped a meal, paramedics would have to rush me right to the hospital! More to the point, I feel that people who like the good things in life, who are generous and welcoming and hospitable, are simply more fun. I recently attended a dinner with a woman who was as slim as a pipe cleaner who announced, “I never eat starches.” Well! I can tell you that I won’t be breaking bread with her again. Not that she would eat it in the first place. And she may have been svelte, but her face looked worn and drawn. That’s because a little plumpness around the face keeps you looking youthful.
Of course, if your girdle is making you gasp for air, simply avoid heavy desserts and say “no thank you” to cream-based sauces. But please don’t bore those around you with details about your latest all-asparagus “fad diet,” which I can guarantee you was invented by a secretary at a doctor’s office who weighs 190 pounds.
“So who’s coming tomorrow?” I asked. I liked most of Vi’s friends, many of whom she had collected after they were guests on her show. This time around, she was hosting my absolute favorite, Millicent, a brusque former reporter for Associated Press who had once shouted down Henry Kissinger, as well as a fashion designer, an interior decorator for two First Ladies, and a “lady doctor” who used to dispense health tips on the show every Wednesday. And, of course, puppy-eyed, bucktoothed Arlene, best known as the deadpan sidekick to Bob Schackman in The Consolidated Oil Comedy Hour.
Vi was waiting for me to ask her what she was wearing to her shindig, so I dutifully did. “Oh, my apricot pantsuit, with that silk blouse that you like, with the dachshunds on it,” she said. “And maybe the white enamel bracelet that Morty gave me. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”
I knew. “What about the glasses?” I said. “I’m thinking the brown frames with the apricot-tinted lenses.” Vi had dozens of pairs, something to match every outfit.
“Oh, Lillian, you know me so well!” She laughed. “So, are you adjusting well to life at home?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I really think that a good rest will be the best thing for you. And of course your parents will take wonderful care of you. Oh! And are you still thinking of guests for December? Doris keeps pestering me, she’s doing Steel Magnolias at the Palm Beach Playhouse, but I don’t know. Oh, what the heck, she’s a good old broad. And did you ever get those invitations out for me before you left, the ones for the chili cook-off? It’s for sick kids. Leukemia, I think, but I must confess that I’m not sure.”
I told her I sent the invites, wished her luck, and hung up. Then I climbed into bed, pulled my old blue floral Laura Ashley bedspread up to my chin, and opened a book with a sigh. After a few hours, my head was nodding and I turned off the lamp. A crack of yellow light from the hallway still shone through the door. Then, abruptly, it winked out. Must be eleven o’clock, I thought drowsily. That’s when the timers click off. Then I turned over and went to sleep.
chapter six
The next morning I woke up and wandered down to the kitchen. It was eight-thirty and my parents were long gone. A note on the counter read, “Went to Costco, etc. Help yourself to breakfast!!!” Next to the note sat a bowl, a spoon, a carton of orange juice, and a Tupperware container of the cereal that my parents bought in bulk. Every variety had a brand name that was familiar but a tiny bit off, like Frosted Flecks or Rice Krinkles.
They hadn’t written when they were going to be home, so I consulted the calendar hanging on the kitchen bulletin board. Every day was black with markings. Today’s agenda: Glass recycle. United Way dinner committee. Oil change. Leaf blower and bags. Pantry duty.
Some welcome home. And what was pantry duty? I distractedly ate some Flecks and wandered upstairs to their office and turned on their computer. The screen saver was a photo of Ginny’s children, Blake and Jordan, dressed in crisp blue and white
outfits posing barefoot on a sand dune. The tousle-haired kids grinned at the camera, Jordan’s arms around her younger brother. They looked like they just alighted from a boat.
Blake was named at the last minute, after months of agony on the part of Ginny. I didn’t ease the process when she would call me to sound out her latest name choice, but what was I to do when her journey to Blake traveled through ancient Greece and the pages of Shakespeare? “I was thinking about Nestor,” she would say casually. “He was king of Pylos in the Iliad.”
“Huh,” I’d say. “Nestor’s kind of a fat-butt name, isn’t it?”
“You think?” I could hear instant doubt in her voice. For all of her gold-plated degrees, I was still able to undo Ginny just by sounding coolly emphatic when I made my insane, baseless pronouncements. I had never met a Nestor, let alone one with a giant behind. But Ginny rarely demanded proof, she just accepted without question that if she named her son Nestor, he would be cursed with a jiggly, womanish rear end.
“What about Menas? From Antony and Cleopatra? The character was a pirate, but I love the way it sounds, and—”
I cut her off. “That name says ‘bad breath’ to me. ‘Can somebody give Menas a mint?’” This made no sense, but her hesitant silence told me that the idea had been effectively squelched. Who wants to confer a lifetime of halitosis on an innocent baby? Her unusual submissiveness was so satisfying that I became addicted to vetoing names, and I did so by the dozens as the birth date neared. When she was researching old family names, I became positively dictatorial.
Arthur? “Mm,” I said absently. “Hairy ears.”
“Name me an Arthur with hairy ears.”
“Arthur Miller,” I said smoothly. “Art Garfunkel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Conan Doyle.” Being the bratty younger sister had the most rejuvenating effect on me.
“How do you know Arthur Conan Doyle had hairy ears?” She tried to sound challenging, but I could sense her enthusiasm already waning.
“From photographs,” I said. Truthfully, I mistily recalled a handlebar mustache, but no hairy ears.
Everett? Dandruff. Leon? Drifter. Boris? Bushy eyebrows with one rogue two-inch-long hair that waved crazily like an antenna.
“Do any names have positive connotations?” she said miserably after one fraught conversation. “What about your own name? It’s a family name, too.”
I considered for a moment. “My name makes me think of a dish of dusty hard candy that has congealed into a loaf. But for me, that’s a positive image.”
Eventually I drove her away. In retrospect, I should have approved of a few to keep the game going, Still, I saved Blake from being called Alexey, which I dismissed as something you’d name your rottweiler.
I sighed and clicked onto my high school reunion website. When Adam left me, I had decided not to go. I had lost touch with most people, aside from Lynn, who had become a private-school teacher and lived in Richmond with her husband and son. But lately, just for kicks, I had begun to check the website daily to see who was attending and to scan through Classmate News for fresh posts.
There was a uniformity to most of the updates—many references to kids (“I have two beautiful boys, Shayne and Taylor, who keep me on the go all the time—soccer, tai kwon do, etc.”) and unfathomable job titles. What was a systems analyst? Or a logistics manager? How about an associate technical fellow for the Boeing Company working in the area of computational fluid dynamics? Still, there were some gems to be had. Todd Bevan, a slightly unhinged loner with lank, greasy hair who sometimes threw chairs in class, was a clean-cut fireman with three kids. In his picture now, grinning in his uniform, he seemed like a handsome, well-adjusted catch.
Uh-oh. Our class president, Hugh Futterman, seemed to have lost his footing:
I am “between jobs” right now but I have been having a blast with a society that reenacts WWII battles (link to our website is below). Just trying to have fun because life is short. I also raise ferrets in my spare time. Love my little guys! Still into cars & vehicles.
If one has to point out that one is “having a blast,” is one actually having a blast? And I always associated ferret ownership with meth labs and matted shag carpeting and drunken parties where the ferret emerges around midnight, crawling around on the shoulders of some kid who should be in bed.
Moving on, Lynn’s erstwhile crush, Kurt Sebalius, was doing well for himself:
Took my first job after college as a stockbroker in NYC but got disillusioned. Married a great lady named Cindy and we have two kids, Matteo and Michaela. Last year my wife and I started a home organization company called Clarity Begins at Home and we are kicking ass! Psyched for the reunion. Jonesy, I can still drink you under the table so get ready.
There was, unsurprisingly, no update from Christian, but my heart lurched at the sight of a post from Charlotta Janssen, a tall, arty girl with angular features who was inevitably described as “striking” or “interesting-looking,” the sort of person who parents noticed immediately but classmates passed over.
Moved to San Francisco and opened an art gallery…. I have traveled all over the world in search of new artists…Kenya, Iceland, Thailand, to name a few places…. Saw Christian Somers in Paris, he is doing great.
Charlotta saw Christian? He probably never said two words to her in school. And he had lived in London, not Paris. Did they run into each other on the street on a random weekend?
It was maddening.
I checked the RSVPs. Christian hadn’t said yes, but then, he hadn’t said no, either.
The phone rang. I heard Ginny’s voice on the machine. “Lillian, I know you’re there. Pick up.”
I grabbed the phone. “Here I am.”
“How’s it going? Are you settled in?”
“I am, pretty much.”
“Let me guess. They’re out, right?”
“Right. They had something on the calendar about pantry duty, whatever that is.”
“Yes. They go to the women’s shelter in Newton and fill the pantry with donated goods.”
“What? Since when?”
“Lillian, they’ve been doing it for over a year. So, what are you up to?”
“Since you asked,” I said, “I’m reading updates on my class-reunion website. Here’s a good one. Do you remember Derek Szymanski, the burnout?
“Derek. Derek. No.”
“Remember? They called him Scum-anski?”
“Oh, Scum-anski, right, right.”
“Well, now he’s a born-again Christian living in Montana. Listen to this: ‘and yes, I am enjoying church attendance, and serving God in whatever ways I am able.’”
“Am I correct in assuming you’ve decided to go to the reunion?”
I paused. “You know what? I think I will.”
“Good for you. I had no interest in going to mine. You had a better class than I did, anyway. I haven’t thought of any of those people in years.”
“Oh, come on. There has to be somebody who crosses your mind occasionally.”
Ginny was silent for a minute. “Well. There was this one guy. He wasn’t very popular, but I always thought he was so cute.”
I sat up. “Really? Who was it?”
“Do you remember Jon Burke?”
“No.” I nimbly Googled his name. There were acres of Jon Burkes, but locating people online was a special skill of mine, honed from years of tracking down Vi’s cronies to book them on her show. Usually I was armed with only a name and some erroneous detail like I could swear he was a panelist on What’s My Line?
“Jon moved to our school during my sophomore year,” said Ginny. “Normally I would never have talked to him, but we did Pippin together. He was in the drama department. I always thought he was very handsome in that classic kind of square-jawed way, but I never saw him at parties. He was just too shy. And you know me; I went out with the jocks. But I always did wonder about him.”
Hm. A would-be actor. I tried a few different searches while she reminisced.
Nothing. Then I went on the Internet Movie Database, my favorite source for Vi’s more obscure actor pals.
Ah. There he was, although he now went by Jonathan Burke. “If I could dig up something, would you be interested?” I asked casually.
“Sure, I guess.”
“Well, I have his head shot and résumé right in front of me.”
“You do not. You do not!” Her voice rose. “Oh my God. What does he look like? What does he do? Does he still have his hair?”
I could hear a toddler’s voice in the background. “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Blake piped.
“Blake, honey, go play in the other room,” she said absently. “Oh my God. I’m going on my computer right now. Stay there.” Ginny never said Oh my God.
She gasped. “He looks good,” she said quietly. “It’s a black-and-white picture so you can’t tell, but he had the most beautiful blue eyes. They’re the exact color of Windex. Huh. He lives in Los Angeles. Good for him. I wonder if he’s married. Wow, he really is cute.”
I scanned the bottom of his résumé, after Additional Skills (Southern and Irish Dialect, Driver’s License, Red Belt Karate, Billiards, Tennis), and saw that he was “engaged to fellow thespian Lindze Stevens.”
“Look at the bottom of the résumé,” I said.
“Where? Oh, right, right.” She was quiet again. “His résumé is pretty long. He’s done well. Look, he starred in some film called Highway Justice.”
I called up Highway Justice. “It says here that it was only released overseas.”
“Oh. Right. Hm. When you really scan through his credits, most of them aren’t starring roles,” she said. “See? ‘Waiter.’ ‘Agitated salesclerk in store.’”
