“Mention it to her, I’d help with it, Peggy is good at that kind of practical project,” he agreed, seeing too clearly that their grown children were still a kind of moral connection drawing them together but not necessarily harmoniously.
“She has the problem with the thing she signed for a loan. Did she talk to you about that?”
“She doesn’t talk to me much,” Ran said. “She thinks I’ve always been on Dick’s side, since I see him from time to time. I was sort of on Dick’s side, never thought of him as gay, though.”
“She signed with a loan shark, now she has to pay a larcenous amount of interest. She was trying to prepay her mortgage or something.”
“Oh, Peggy. Well, tell her to send me the papers, I’ll get my lawyer to look at them. My life is run by lawyers cleaning up life’s gaffes these days.”
He’s a fat cat now, she thought; she couldn’t hire a bank of lawyers to clean up her gaffes. “Yes. You still have your lordly, domineering way, you know.” It slipped out before she knew it, but he didn’t rise to it. They skirted contention again and continued their careful discussion, two people who were still rancorous.
“He might find some kind of clause,” she agreed.
“About Curt, I was on the point of asking a Thai guy I know. Peggy should sell that damn silly little house,” he added. “It’s not going to appreciate. I’m going to talk to her about that.”
“We had too many children too fast,” Lorna said, suddenly. “We didn’t enjoy them enough. It’s nice you’re getting a second chance with your new daughter.”
He didn’t know if she knew about Gilda’s situation. Was she needling him in some way?
“People generally agree that grandparenthood is the chance you get to repair your sins of omission,” Ran said.
“That’s the cliché, but I don’t believe it,” said Lorna. “You have the one chance with your own children.”
Ran, thinking of Gilda’s pregnancy, would have liked to tell Lorna about it, but didn’t.
* * *
—
Ran offered to drive her home, but she refused, said she’d walk, but she took the bus. Her thoughts were darker than her usually optimistic temperament permitted or the note of friendliness at the end of the reunion warranted. As she talked to Ran, a reality had clarified, and it was unwelcome: a woman alone, without a job or money, can barely manage her own autonomy, and can’t help her children very much. So much of her life had always been predicated on her having a support system—male, in general, given the way society was presently constituted. Ran had at one time been her support, enabling the school and tuition and new shoes and things the children had needed.
In reality survival meant sellout, a tangle of dependence, as fragile as a spiderweb, or as strong as a spiderweb. She’d been so unwise, her whole life, and foolish now to think that because she’d written a book and given some lectures she had the power to help her kids or even keep herself in a halfway decent fashion. Silly.
These broody ruminations wouldn’t go away but instead darkened to encompass sickness and death: life was wonderful, and then it was over. No one ever got around the sadness of that. She remembered Hams when he must have just figured out about death—he was about four, saying You’re going to die, Mommy, and how she didn’t say the unthinkable: And so are you, but not for a long, long time. But he knew, though only four years old.
How short the bliss of feeling immortal. Did Phil Train still have it, believing as he did in the life of the world to come? Presumably. She thought of the new babies—the baby Hams and the other one little Gilda would be having. Ran had stayed away from the subject of his other family and Gilda, and she shouldn’t have mentioned her; probably she wasn’t supposed to know anything about her.
Amid these thoughts, something happened getting off the Union Street bus; one of her legs, something, failed her as she stepped off the last step, and crumpled, landing her on her face, skinning both her knees and the palms of her hands, smashing them painfully against the pavement as she slid forward with the momentum of her fall. The woman who had got off the bus just ahead of her turned back to help her up and brush her off.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Shaken,” Lorna was able to say. “Shaken” barely described it. Her knees and the palms of her hands stung, and there was something wrong with her ankle, not a sprain, just a weak lameness. Had she tripped? Had she fainted? She felt the stares of the bus passengers behind the windows as it pulled off: Look, an old woman fell off the bus.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
“Yes, yes, thank you. I don’t know what happened.”
“I heard you crash. Let me help. Do you live near here?”
“A couple of blocks.” Lorna looked up the daunting hill that led from Van Ness to Larkin. She couldn’t walk; there was something wrong with her ankle.
“Look, you need to get those scrapes cleaned up,” the woman went on, with an air of authority vaguely nurse- or doctorlike. She waved at a passing taxi and put Lorna into it before Lorna could collect her wits. Her rescuer climbed in, too, and directed the driver to take them to Saint Francis Hospital, only a few blocks away. There was no point in protesting the kindly but patronizing offer of help, reflecting the benefactor’s perception of Lorna’s age; she could resent it later.
“I can’t stay, but they’ll look you over,” the woman said, nodding to the taxi to wait for her. “Do you have insurance?”
“Oh yes,” Lorna said, though of course she did not, her health insurance was in France.
The woman deposited her on a chair inside the emergency room and apologized for abandoning her there. After she left, Lorna weighed getting up and just leaving, too, but her one leg was strangely weak, though it didn’t hurt, and it was true she didn’t want the scrapes on her knees to get infected. Eventually a young intern saw to her: X-ray—she had torn, but not severed, an Achilles tendon. It could happen at any age, the intern reassured her. Tendon pulled, hence the fall. The sting of her knees being painted with antiseptic brought back the special nostalgia of childhood skinned knees. Why had the intern mentioned age?
The worst of it was humiliation. Sprawling off the bus before the world, an old lady, Are you all right, dear? Your confidence in your own two legs is shaken; in your ability to keep upright, even; in the whole orientation of your body. And when she was discharged, them asking if she was okay to go home alone, was there someone there to care for her? Yes, yes, she had said, but of course there wasn’t. The Chins. Or she could call Hams, but she wouldn’t.
The ER desk summoned a taxi from the rank lurking across the street, and an orderly put her into it. “Keep your heel up,” he said in a strong Russian accent; he was probably a doctor in his native land. “Keep off it but keep the heel elevated, wear a shoe with a heel,” he said, and handed her the paper on which this instruction was written.
“You don’t bandage it? Something?”
“Nothing to do. Just keep the heel up.”
Later she saw that the bill they pressed into her hand was six hundred dollars. “We can take something off that if you pay right now up front,” the person at the desk told her.
“Six hundred? But—” She’d only been there forty minutes and had her knees daubed with Mercurochrome. In France they wouldn’t have charged for it. Well, the X-ray. Had she needed it really?
“How much would you take off?” This was more curiosity than it was a plan.
“Thirty percent.” Lorna realized that since she had no insurance, she’d better take the deal. She fished for her credit cards.
Once home, she hobbled into her apartment and to the sofa and propped her leg up. Only then did a worse pain set in. She sat there and tried to read the stuff she’d grabbed out of her mailbox, but the episode had shaken her, as she’d said when she fell off the bus. Her tendon had torn
, but why had it torn? What sinister condition did this portend? What if she died alone in her mean little apartment? It wasn’t impossible; people died. Found in their rooms after days, after people noticed something, or rang many times on the phone. It was more than humiliation, she didn’t care about that, it was the sudden snap or twist, having your body betray you without warning. Where she had been high-stepping with life, she now felt the plunge, the crash, into reality.
As she sat there, Armand-Loup telephoned to discuss an idea he had about Russell, but didn’t persist with once he heard her wan voice.
“Lo, est-ce ça va? You don’t sound yourself.”
Somehow the idea that there was someone who knew how she should sound brought tears, but she bravely said she was fine.
38
Nearly meeting death at their hands seemed to entitle Ursula to greater familiarity than before with the Motts, or it was clear she thought so; and her pronouncements did seem to them to carry a certain extra weight they couldn’t explain. She became comfortable calling Amy to chat about Gilda and the Situation, or with dropping in to ask their advice about something. She thought her ideas for the baby’s future would be better discussed in person, so about a week after her allergic reaction, she came to see them without Ian. She wafted in, enveloped as always in a certain scent both woodsy and floral—was it Calèche?
It was five o’clock. They had drinks in the garden, to the hum of bees, which reminded them all of the EpiPen incident. “Are we okay out here?” Ran asked. Ursula assured him she did not fear bees and now stayed far away from all shellfish. Gilda was staying late at school, which was just as well.
“I thought Gilda looked lovely the other night,” Ursula said. “She’s obviously feeling well. You would never know that she is…” She suddenly realized, with a chill, that perhaps Gilda wasn’t, anymore.
But Amy nodded enthusiastically. “She seems thriving. Her diabetes is under good control. Ran is watching her meds carefully, and she’s careful herself. We’ve found a doctor who specializes in diabetic pregnancy.”
Ursula had known vaguely about Gilda’s diabetes but not realized it bore mentioning and surveying, had not understood its seriousness. Her famously large and smoky eyes widened with expression—was it horror, earnest hope, concern? “I gather she’s—going through with it?”
“No” and “Yes” the Motts said in chorus, and Ursula saw how it was.
“I’m against it for reasons of Gilda’s health,” Ran said, “but Amy and Gilda seem willing to run the risks.” Which meant, Ursula saw, with relief, that Gilda was going through with it.
“Of course Ian and I want what is best, whatever is best. I hope Ian has told you he plans to step up, whatever is needed.” It was awkward but true. “Play a role. Accept a role, I mean.” The Motts looked reflective. Did they even want Ian to be involved? Ursula felt the chill again.
“Ian’s starting at Stanford in August?” Ran asked. “Good. That’s good. Amy and I both went to Stanford.” He remembered too late that he had said this before.
“He’ll be a junior,” Ursula said, conscious that Stanford did not mean as much to her as to those who had attended it; in them it produced an emotion she could detect but not share. “They accepted almost all his credits, but there are core courses he’ll still have to take.”
“What’s his major?” Amy asked.
“I’m not sure he has to declare one till he makes up the requirements,” Ursula said evasively, not knowing the answer. Political science, was it? Psychology? Phys ed?
“I wanted to discuss with you my idea that it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Gilda and Ian to get married. I know it’s hardly ever done anymore, but I’m an old-fashioned person, I guess. A strong footing for the child. The young people would carry on with their schooling, of course, and eventually, well, who knows. Maybe a marriage wouldn’t last forever, but it would be an adult way to start. Responsible and mature.”
Shock registered on the faces of Amy and Ran. The idea of their child of fifteen being tied down to marriage was unthinkable. But of course she was going to be tied down to a child, unless some other solution presented itself. Their thinking had never progressed beyond the basic dilemma, nor had they chosen among the possible solutions—adoption, someone else claiming to be its mother, the Motts acting as parents themselves, Julie…Ursula watched them carefully in hopes of divining their feelings, but they were inscrutable, and divided.
“Gilda will be sixteen next March,” Amy said.
“Sixteen seems less drastic than fifteen,” Ursula agreed, “but then it will be too late.”
“No, it’s unthinkable,” said Ran. “We aren’t hillbillies. You don’t get married at sixteen, either.”
“Quietly. I’m not talking about a big fancy wedding,” Ursula said. The very idea of a big wedding seemed to upset them even more. Ran stood, paced around the room. Amy stared, pale.
“Out of the question. Gilda has her whole life ahead of her. Ian, too—he’s how old?” Ran said.
“He’ll be twenty-one next February.”
“Demented,” said Ran.
“Then what are you thinking, about the baby?” Ursula asked.
“We just don’t know,” Amy cried. “It could live here, there’s Carla to help, or I thought Gilda could go somewhere with Ran’s granddaughter Julie. She would miss a semester and then just be back—we’d say illness, maybe. We haven’t discussed it with her, really, until we could have a coherent proposition.”
“What are Ian’s thoughts?” Ran asked, in a voice Ursula thought a little menacing.
“I’m not sure he’s grasped the realities,” Ursula admitted. Collectively, they despaired, but agreed that it was good that Ursula had come to talk it over, ice broken, subject become more comfortable.
As she left, Ursula asked, “Do we know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“She hasn’t yet had the first ultrasound,” Amy said. “Not till the beginning of the third month.”
“I’ll discuss marriage with the lawyers,” Ran said. “It’s either a bad idea or a good idea, they’ll know.” Though he had no intention to do any such thing.
“Of course only a technicality,” Amy said. “It wouldn’t have to last.”
When Ursula had left, Ran and Amy discussed Gilda getting married. “I can somewhat see the point,” Amy said. “The baby has a name, so to speak, no iffy episode for it to find out about later, respectably married parents, romantically young, like Romeo and Juliet. But Gilda goes on with her schooling, marriage would just be a technicality.”
“And they live with us? No.”
“No, no, they aren’t a couple, nothing changes. I don’t think they even know each other.”
“That boy is not living with us. Or with Gilda, God knows.”
“No, of course not, nothing changes.”
Ran realized that he had ceased to argue the case for interrupting Gilda’s pregnancy, and that Amy had dropped her token solidarity with him in favor of the unborn child, whose future reactions she was imagining, its satisfaction to find its parents were respectably wed. But there was still some hope of miscarriage, even a likelihood. Otherwise, he dreaded the sight he could imagine too well of his adored child swelling like a seedpod, her waddling gait as her pelvic ligaments loosened, her biochemistry off the charts…
Ran had dragged his feet about an ultrasound, despite the suggestions of Dr. Gill, Gilda’s ob-gyn, who thought it should be done immediately. Ran feared that Amy and Gilda would be sentimental about the humanoid fetal outline, but now he accepted the inevitability and took Gilda himself to the facility in Palo Alto. His fears were realized: Gilda was delighted with the little printout of a smeary blob and declared herself scrupulously unwilling to know its sex, the way people in the olden days didn’t know until the surprise at its birth. Accordingly, he suggested to Dr. Gill that
he and Amy not be told, either, lest they betray it some way. Ursula was rather cross about this failure, and was hoping it would be a boy.
After endless discussions, weighing pros and cons, Ran and Amy reluctantly acceded to the idea of a city hall wedding some morning, the minimum just to get it recorded, with themselves and Ursula as witnesses, and maybe a passerby, just to emphasize the absence of significance and sentiment, just a nod to the requirements of society when it came to recording a new citizen. Amy’s lawyers hastily prepared a prenup designed to disenfranchise Ian and especially Ursula as far as could be done from any share in Amy’s money.
The form of her marriage didn’t seem to matter to Gilda—she had never been a girl who leafed through Brides magazine dreaming of her someday wedding or wrote down lists of children’s names. “I don’t want to marry Ian,” she said when they brought up the idea. “I mean, nothing against Ian, I’m too young to get married. No.” Since her parents agreed with her, they dropped the subject; but Ursula was not letting it go and came up with ever-more-inventive reasons why it was indispensable, or beneficial, or wise. She never told the Motts, even when they asked, what Ian thought about marriage. She had not asked him.
Ian was basically unaware of his mother’s contrivances and thought the subject had propitiously gone away. He was too wrapped up in the lurid carnality of his affair with Julie—plus his studies and soccer—to wonder very often how Gilda was doing. What he did wonder was: Theoretically, how many times a day could a person have sex, given the luck of a long day alone with Julie in some private place? When Ursula finally told him he probably would be getting married to Gilda, he had no reaction but shock.
“Not for life, probably, but for the sake of the baby,” Ursula said. “Gilda is an agreeable, pretty girl, after all.”
“This is the most cynical and medieval thing I’ve ever heard of,” Ian said. “You can’t be serious.”
Lorna Mott Comes Home Page 24
