*
That evening, her mother called. “Are you folks okay?” Rachel asked. “It’s been on the news about tornadoes in Tennessee.”
“We’re fine,” Laura said. “But it was pretty fierce for a while.”
“It didn’t damage your house? The pictures looked awful. A wonder nobody was killed.”
“It pulled the damper out of the chimney.” The image still chilled her. “The power was out for almost twenty-four hours.”
“You’re still coming for my birthday, aren’t you?”
“I think so. I’ll check with Lillian and Howard. I know we tentatively planned to, when we were all home together.” She did a rapid calculation. Three weeks until Rachel’s birthday. Maybe by then she’d have preliminary sketches in to the publisher. Her first commission—a small advertising brochure, but it was a start.
“They can come just for the weekend,” Rachel said. “Can you stay a little longer?”
She drew in her breath. Lillian’s library job. Howard’s teaching. Her own time always expendable. “I don’t know. It’s pretty busy here.”
“Oh?” Rachel said. “What’s going on that’s so pressing?”
The question caught her off guard. What to say? I miss my father? Half the time, I don’t know my daughter? I have one commission and I’m trying to redo my old portfolio? My husband is so preoccupied that sometimes I want to scream? And besides that, I’m getting age spots!
“Just a lot of things,” she said. “I’ll think about it. How are you doing?”
“Better, the doctor says. No more fainting spells. But I’m not sure I want to stay here in the house. It gets pretty lonely.”
“Oh?” Her hand tightened on the phone. “It hasn’t been very long.” She tried to keep her voice light. “You have to give it a chance. Is Nettie still coming?”
“Yes. A couple of days. The nights are lonely.”
“I’m sure. We’ll talk about it, Mother, over your birthday.”
They said their good-byes. Laura hung up. For a moment, she leaned against the wall, her heart plummeting. Oh, dear. Maybe it wasn’t going to work out for Rachel after all. Then what?
She moved toward the next room. “Trace?” she called. “Annie?”
But they were watching television—pictures of the storm—and didn’t look up.
The question of Rachel’s future had lain like an undertow beneath the varied rises and falls, the whirlpools and surface calms, of Will Taylor’s long illness.
Laura had learned of his illness a few days before her parents were to have come for a visit. Her mother called. “We can’t come, dear. Father is in the hospital, a kind of dizzy spell. Maybe by Thanksgiving he’ll be stronger.”
Several years ago, he had had surgery for a growth in his chest. The report was encouraging—benign, all clear. Still, he had been coughing so, these last months. At their annual summer reunion at Lillian’s home on Lake Michigan, he had seemed frail. Laura and her brother and sister spoke of it quietly among themselves—not to worry Rachel or Will himself. They would stay in touch with one another, make visits to their parents as they were able.
After her mother’s call, Laura made plans to go to Hadley.
On the way to the airport, she said to Trace, “If my father dies and my mother is left alone—what do you think? Could we offer to have her come with us?”
“I’d be happy to have her. It’s mainly up to you, though. Most of it would fall on you. I know you’ve wanted to get back into art.”
“I know.”
They were silent. It had been a long-cherished dream, to pick up on the artistic career she had gladly put aside when Bart was born. Then Philip. And Annie. Three children in less than five years. Friends who’d known her in her brief years of working for the magazine had asked, “Do you miss it?”
“No.” The answer was easy. “This is my vocation now. Maybe later I can be a painter.”
But she’d kept putting off getting into it in any serious way. A few posters for the children’s school events, the art council’s annual show, some pastel sketches of her children. One spring she’d taken an advanced studio class in the adult-education program at the high school but then was prevailed on to be in charge of programs for the fall PTA. Later, she’d organize her time around painting and design. When Bart left—the household down by one—she thought she would begin. Last September, when it had been Philip’s turn to set off for college and there had been only she and Trace and Annie, she’d thought surely she would make a serious stab at it—maybe do some things for the spring sidewalk show in the park. She mustn’t wait until Annie was gone. She knew of women who went into severe depression when their last child left home, as though they had no reason for living. Either that or they got into a flurry of distractions—tole painting, club activities, volunteer work that kept them busy but didn’t fill the void left by their children’s leaving. She was determined not to let that happen. But she seemed to have less time for herself, not more, and now, with her father’s illness, the possibility her mother might be left alone… Still, if she was disciplined about it, she could work with her mother here, couldn’t she? Or wait a few more years?
She looked over at Trace. He was right of course. Most of it would fall on her.
They were almost to the airport when she said, “Thanks. I’ll tell her.”
That evening, she and Rachel sat at the supper table after their first visit with Will. “Mother, if something should happen—if he doesn’t get well—think about coming to live with us?”
Rachel, her shoulders bent with fatigue and age, looked up from the delicate Haviland plate, the vestiges of creamed codfish against the pale mottled roses. “Thank you, dear. What about Trace?”
“It’s from him, too. We talked about it.”
Her mother stirred her tea again. “That’s very generous. We’ll see.” She pushed back her cup and saucer and looked up. “Well, let’s get back to the hospital. Evening visiting hours have already started.”
Leaving Hadley after a few days, she hugged her mother in farewell. “Of course we hope Father will be well. But if you should need to—remember what I said about coming to live with us.”
“Thank you, dear.”
But as time went by and Will did not get better, the prospect of having her mother come to live with them, finish her life with them, seemed more complicated, filled Laura at times with panic, at other times with a feeling of loving benevolence toward her and the prospect of caring for her, being close companions again.
*
Her father had been largely absent from her earliest years, working late, working Saturdays, not going with them on visits to her grandparents’ farm in New York State. It was her mother who had given her life color and light, who had been the lodestar and anchor in the world she shared with Lillian.
She had asked her mother once—it was only a small-talk question, so sure was she of the answer—“You love Lillian and me more than Daddy, don’t you?” It was early morning and they were in the back bedroom of her grandparents’ home. Her mother sat on the edge of the bed, looking strange and beautiful without her glasses, her long hair falling down her back, her white nightgown flowing from her shoulders. She looked amused at the question. “I love you in a different way,” she said. Laura had been shocked, startled, more astonished than hurt. Who was he—that stranger?
As Laura got older she and her father grew closer. They were in some ways alike—even-tempered, given to jokes and attention to sunsets. Will was a gardener. He would take her on walks through his rows of corn, beans, tomatoes, then along the flower beds that edged the lawn. “There’s the iris. I tried some arbutus,” he said, “but it won’t transplant.” They recommended favorite books to each other.
She went back to Massachusetts several times that fall and winter. The growth in Will’s chest had spread. It was growing very slowly. Perhaps he could have a few more years.
But he was failing, and over the months thei
r hopes seemed more contrived.
In mid-March, Rachel phoned. The doctor had called her. He said, “Your husband is a very sick man. You had better alert the family.”
Laura went to Hadley again. Five days later, his wife and children around him, Will Taylor died peacefully in his sleep.
They arranged for the funeral, for burial in the family plot. “I’ve always thought cremation,” Rachel said. They all agreed to cremation. Then, the decision made, she expressed misgiving: “I’m not sure what Will wanted. We talked about it, but I could never get him to say.” Her voice drifted off, as though if he were to happen into the room, maybe at last she could get him to tell her.
The day of the funeral was warm for March. The snow was gone. They put sprays of evergreens on Will’s grave. After the service, back at the house, circling the tables laden with platters of food the neighbors had brought in, sitting in the living room, their plates balanced on their laps, they spoke of Will, retold his jokes, his favorite stories, cherished the memories of his life.
The in-laws and the grandchildren went home.
Laura and Lillian and Howard stayed on for another week.
Laura had not repeated her offer—“Come and live with us.” The thought—What if she accepts?—suppressed during the crisis of her father’s illness, returned now in panic. But her mother had said nothing. A woman came to help with the housework and laundry. Rachel talked daily on the phone with her friends, with Will’s sister, Ella, who lived on the same side of town. She speculated about the coming summer, wondered whether to keep the car, spoke of the boy they hired each year to take off the storm windows.
One evening, after Rachel had gone to bed, Laura and Howard and Lillian sat in the living room, looking at old photos, artifacts of their parents’ lives. Months ago, she had told Howard and Lillian of her offer to Rachel. Now she blurted out, “What if Mother does want to come and live with us? I should never have made the offer! I know I’m the only one who doesn’t have a regular job—not yet. I’d love to have her for a visit, or have her live with us half the time. But I can’t give my whole life over—and I know that’s what it would be.”
Howard took off his glasses, clasped the bridge of his nose, his fingers spreading out to rub his eyes—a gesture so reminiscent of Will, Laura almost forgot her anxious question. “I don’t think the matter will come up. She seems content here.”
Lillian pushed the sleeve of her blue sweater along one arm. “You couldn’t, Lou”—a nickname Lillian sometimes used when she was feeling protective or unusually tender toward her younger sister—“but I’m sure it’s been a security for her all these months. It has for me, too—not needing to decide about making such an offer myself.” She drew in her breath. “It wouldn’t be easy. But I think we could handle it better. We have that great big house. Our children are still home to help and be company for her. I’m home for lunch most days. I know it would be all right with Richard. I asked him.”
To their relief, the question—as Howard predicted—never came up. At the week’s end, they all went home. Maybe they would try to come back, all of them, for her birthday in May.
*
In April, Rachel fell. She’d had a mild infection and got up suddenly. Nothing to worry about, the doctor said, but maybe it would be better if she could avoid having to climb stairs twice every day.
The cleaning woman and a neighbor helped her move her bed downstairs to the large bay window in the dining room. She was fine, she insisted, getting along fine, looking forward to seeing them. They weren’t to worry.
A few weeks later, however, talking with Laura right after the tornado that had given them all such a fright, Rachel seemed less sure of herself. Her children, from their homes in Michigan and Tennessee and Texas, confirmed their plans to visit on her birthday—the last weekend in May.
*
It was when Laura was talking on the phone with Lillian about arrival and departure days that she noted with alarm a small notation on the calendar. “Wait! Annie hasn’t said anything about it, but that Saturday is her school prom. I want to be here for that.”
Annie was in the next room. She called out, “Forget it. I’m not going. Proms are a silly sideshow.”
“Hold on.” Laura cupped her hand over the phone. Had Annie and Gordon had a fight? Probably not. This must be part of Annie’s rebellious streak. “Okay if I go to see Grandma, then?”
“Sure.”
Then Annie decided to go to the prom after all. “Once in my life I should see what a high school prom is like,” she said, telling Laura and Trace one evening at dinner.
“Oh dear. And I won’t be here!” Laura said. She thought a minute. “I wonder if the others could change our get-together in Hadley.”
“No, no!” Annie insisted.
“I hate to miss it—seeing you and Gordon off.”
“I’ll be here,” Trace said.
“Will you take pictures?” Laura asked.
“Sure,” he promised. “I’ll be glad to. We’ll be fine.”
“I’ll get the camera all set up,” Laura said.
So that’s how they left it.
Annie bought herself a simple pale apricot chiffon gown. “Want to see it on me?” she asked Laura and Trace as they sat in the living room reading.
“Of course,” Laura said.
Trace put down his paper. “Sure. Where is it?”
Annie laughed. “I have to put it on first.”
In a few minutes, she came back. “Here I am.” She turned slowly in the light from the overhead chandelier, her eyes bright, cheeks flushed, her long brown hair curling at her bare shoulders, the skirt swirling around her long legs.
She put her hand to her throat, a string of pearls. “I borrowed these, Mom. Is that okay?”
“Of course. I’d love to have you wear them. They were my wedding gift from your father.” She looked over at him, but he had already returned to his paper.
Annie backed up to her. “Will you undo the clasp?”
“Of course.” She lifted Annie’s hair, reached under, unfastened the pearls, let them fall into Annie’s cupped hand.
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll take this off now. Glad you approve.” Annie brushed her cheek with a kiss and walked from the room, the apricot cloth falling from her slim hips, floating behind her over the carpeted floor.
Over the years, Laura Randall had watched her only daughter with a kind of tender awe. As the time for the birth of her third child drew near and her mother kept saying, “Oh, I hope this time you have a daughter,” she had tried to reassure her, saying, “It’s all right, whichever. Think of the hand-me-downs.”
Then Annie was born, and in a rush of gratitude Laura remembered it all—the unconditional blind love she had felt as a small child for her mother, and while that had moderated over the years, somehow there had been associations too rich to know, a kind of absolute home about her knowledge of her mother, about the train of life they carried.
It was that way through Annie’s childhood, years of doing things together, of being the women in the family, of clothes and cooking and favorite books, so even the words my daughter had the lift, sometimes, of a prayer of gratitude.
The last year or two had been different. She didn’t remember that the boys’ growing up had been this hard. Bouncy and full of verve, Annie was eager now to be making all her own decisions, wishing she didn’t have another year of high school, so she could be off on her own.
The thought of Annie’s leaving overcame Laura sometimes like a final sadness. Other times—she hesitated to admit this even to herself—she knew it would be a relief to have her gone, to be free of the responsibility for her, when they had so little way of affecting what she did.
Every week seemed to bring some new contest. Right now, it was the camping trip. Before that, it had been the clothing allowance.
For weeks, Annie had been agitating. She wasn’t getting enough clothing allowance. “You don’t realize how much clothes cost.
This shirt”—she lifted the coarse cream-colored cloth of her sleeve—“cost forty dollars. On sale! Do you want me to feel like an outcast at school?”
“We certainly don’t,” Trace said. He turned to Laura. “Peer approval is very important, I know.”
So they had agreed to an additional twenty-five dollars a month. “Oh, thank you.” Annie had hugged them. Fifteen minutes later, she was back. “Can we make it retroactive to my birthday—or at least to the first of the year?” When they said no, they weren’t prepared to do that, she left the room in a pout.
And there were the recurring jars to the sensibilities—though usually not what you could make a moral issue out of, or fuss over without implying that you didn’t trust her, which was unthinkable, since all your life with her had been built on mutual trust. Annie going into the room with Gordon and closing the door. Annie and Gordon entwined around each other while the family sat together and watched TV. When, later, she told Annie it was embarrassing, made them uncomfortable, Annie said, “Would you rather we go somewhere else?”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
There were times when Annie’s bravura delighted her mother. Once when they were doing exercises in Annie’s room, Laura, having quit first—“That’s enough for me; I’m hopeless, anyway”—lay back, her eyes half-closed, and watched her daughter stretch and twist, lift and turn, raise her head and shoulders in a perfect yoga swan. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
Annie lowered her head slowly and turned to sit up. “My photography class wants to do some studies of different ages and needs nude models. I wonder if you’d consider…”
Laura looked at her sharply. “Me?”
“I think you have a nice figure.”
“Well!” Laura looked down at her body in the black leotard. “It’s done what I’ve needed. But I’ve never thought…” She looked up at Annie. “Thank you anyway. But no, I wouldn’t.” But after the exercise session, she stood in front of the big hall mirror, pivoting slowly back and forth.
Such Good People Page 2
