Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

  She saw Annie last Christmas at the party the college always gave for faculty families. She came into her parents’ room to borrow Laura’s curling iron. She was wearing a long red skirt and sleeveless rib-knit shirt that came high under her chin. “I’ll just do it here, okay?”

  “Of course. You look lovely.”

  “Thanks. So do you.” Laura was wearing a pants suit of silk jersey—bright green splashed with white flowers—a long fitted jacket and flaring pants. Annie looked at her, appraising. “I bet Dad loves that.” She took the curling iron (already warm from Laura’s attempt to add some curl to her short auburn hair), leaned into the big mirror, scrutinizing her face while the metal rod of the curling iron, brown-wrapped with her hair, lay close against her cheek. She turned her head to the right, then left, lowered her chin, raised it, her eyes, squinting slightly through contact lenses, never leaving her own image. Laura, beside her, eyes brown like Annie’s, a face with all its edges gone soft, combed her own hair and thought, How lovely she is, but she isn’t sure, and then, remembering herself at sixteen, We have all stood there: Am I pretty? I am a mystery. What will it be for me?

  At the party, mingling among her and Trace’s friends, she watched Annie circulate among the young people. Some of them she knew; some she didn’t. But more than once, she saw Annie surrounded by a circle of young men, her animated face turning from one, then another, saw their responsive laughs, their admiring glances.

  Laura had not expected, or coveted, a daughter this beautiful, this successful. She had been pretty enough herself, growing up, but a much more timid adolescent than her daughter was. She had, in fact, said to Trace as the party drew to a close and Annie was saying a vivacious farewell to a trio of young men who stood in rapt attention, “She’s just the kind of girl I’d have found hard to take when I was sixteen.”

  Now, her trip a week away, Laura’s thoughts turned more and more toward Hadley. One evening, she and Annie were at home together. Trace was at the college and Annie was doing homework in the den while Laura sat in the next room, reading. She’d been feeling sad, missing her father, and, being alone, gave way to some quiet weeping, unaware that from where Annie sat, she could see her mother’s reflection in the dark window glass.

  She didn’t hear Annie get up from her chair, but then there she was, her arms around Laura’s shoulders. “I miss Grandpa, too,” she said, and for a minute they held each other, tears mingling on their cheeks.

  “How do you think Grandma is doing?” Annie asked.

  “Pretty well. I’ll know better when I see her.”

  A wave of regret swept over her. “I hate to be missing the prom. Such an event for you. For your mother, too.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Annie said. “The only reason we’re going is to see how klutzy it is.”

  Laura smiled, thought to herself, And you spent a hundred dollars of your clothing allowance to see how klutzy it is? To Annie, she said, “Well, I’ll see the pictures. And you can tell me all about it when I get home.”

  It occurred to her the next day, as she threaded film in the camera for Trace, screwed in the flash attachment, and left it all on his bureau, that while she’d miss the excitement, miss seeing her beautiful daughter at such an important moment, still—it had always been she, not Trace, who’d been first to cheer Annie on, celebrate her triumphs. This time, with her in Massachusetts, it would be just Trace and Annie. It would be good for them both to have this time together, without her.

  Laura located her seat next to the window. “Excuse me.”

  The woman in the aisle seat tried unsuccessfully to retract her large bulk so Laura could pass. Then she stood and stepped into the aisle.

  “Thank you.” Laura moved to her seat, sat down and leaned her head back, closed her eyes. She heard the woman reseat herself and reopen her magazine. Thank goodness. She did not feel like neighborly pleasantries right now. It was still quite new to her after so many years of family travel to be going somewhere alone and she wanted to savor the solitary adventure.

  Outside the airplane window, rain beat a solid sheet against the glass, collected at the bottom in a churning runoff. She looked at her watch: 7:45. Trace should be back home by now. He’d dropped her off at the curb, not waited, so he could get home in plenty of time to drive Annie to school.

  Last night, when they’d heard the weather prediction, Annie was studying at the dining room table. Trace had called to her, “Shall I drive you tomorrow, since it’s promising to rain?” Laura had been pleased. She usually drove Annie in bad weather, so she wouldn’t have the long walk to the bus. She’d thought Annie’s assent, “Yeah, I guess that’d be okay,” could have been more appreciative. She did hope the two of them would have some good times together while she was gone.

  She picked up a flight magazine, opened it—not with the intention of reading it, but so that the stranger beside her would see she, too, was occupied.

  The magazine fell open to an article titled “Reinventing Your Marriage”—something to the effect that if your marriage was boring, you could make changes—a romantic dinner in front of the fireplace, sex in different rooms, not always in the bedroom. Her own feeling was that your marriage reinvented itself with little prompting as children arrived, grew older, as circumstances changed. Like the old Russian five-year plans—every five years, give or take a few, a new agenda. You knew there was continuity—there had to be. But sometimes now, looking back, those first years with Trace seemed to have taken place in another lifetime.

  *

  She had met Trace at a party when she was visiting her brother at graduate school. “Laura, I’d like you to meet Trace Randall.”

  “How do you do?” She looked up. A formality in the tone as well as the greeting. His dark eyes bright, dark hair falling forward, his head slightly inclined toward her, in what her friend Magda, an expatriate from the Ukraine now working in New York, came to call his “European manner.”

  “Hi,” she said. A pause. “You in geology, too—like Howard?” “No. Nothing that useful. Philosophy.”

  “Ohh.” She’d been interested right away. “I took a couple of courses in college. I thought I’d like aesthetics, until I learned it was mostly math.”

  “Well, not quite.” He smiled, excusing the oversimplification. “And you—what do you do?”

  “I work for a children’s magazine in New York—design, layout. Sometimes a little writing. I designed a write-in column with this owl. Hootlet. Kids wrote to me. I answered them, sent them a picture.” She paused. “Not of me. Of the owl I drew. Hootlet.”

  “An owl.” He didn’t press her further, though a smile crinkled the corners of his mouth. “Want to get a drink of something?”

  They headed toward the refreshment table, then went out onto one of the stone porches facing the quad.

  “What aspect of philosophy are you working in?”

  “Kant. You took philosophy, you said. Did you read him?”

  “Yes, but I don’t remember much. What were his”—she floundered—“basic tenets?”

  “Do you remember his categorical imperative?”

  “Well…” She searched her mind. “No. What was it? Is it?”

  “Basically, it’s the idea that the good is only good if it’s good for everyone. Something can’t be good for one person unless it’s a position everyone could espouse.”

  “It sounds all right. Are there serious flaws?” Behind him, she saw Howard come to the door, his eyes scanning the porch. He’d wanted to introduce her to some other people. She turned away so he wouldn’t see her.

  “Well, yes.” Trace appeared not to have noticed her little maneuver. “It might be good for society to have a group of total pacifists in it, but not necessarily good for everyone to be a pacifist?”

  She pondered it. “I see.” The jukebox was playing a slow dance number. She turned back toward the door. Howard had gone. Inside, the shadows of dancers moved across a window.

  He followed
her glance. “Would you like to dance?”

  “Right here?”

  He held out his arms. “Sure.”

  She moved to him. “Is it good for everyone—dancing?” she teased, her words close against his cheek.

  *

  Two weeks later, he came to New York to see her. When he left on the late Sunday train, they kissed good-bye. Walking back along the station platform, she felt her heart race. “This one could be it,” she said aloud, her words swallowed by the hiss and chug of trains starting to move.

  They got in the pattern of visiting each other every few weeks. In New Haven, she stayed with Howard. In New York, Trace stayed at the Y. In a darkened theater, walking through a park, he would reach for her hand. When she entertained him at Howard’s apartment—Howard tactfully staying away—they sat on the sofa, close, his arm slung around her shoulders. After they were engaged, their embraces became more ardent. There was never any question but that they would wait for sex until they were married. Of course they knew people who weren’t waiting, but it was not their expectation for themselves. They waited.

  Within a year, Laura gave up her job, gladly, and they were married. Sex was, they agreed on their honeymoon drive through New England—eyeing each other over restaurant tables, coming in from sight-seeing and throwing their coats on the floor—worth waiting for.

  While Trace finished graduate school, she taught nursery school. When he got his degree, they moved to Ohio—his first job. Within a year, Bart was born. Three years later, Philip. A whole new world—a marriage with children.

  She got a letter from her old magazine. They were expanding to two issues a month. Was she freelancing at all? They could send her stories to illustrate. They’d love to work with her again. She wrote back. Thank you, but no—the children kept her busy; she was happy with what she was doing and didn’t want deadlines to cope with. With Annie’s birth her life felt complete. If at times the days were long and routine—by 4:30 she could start dinner, and after dinner she could get the children ready for bed, and maybe then she and Trace would have some time to themselves—it was a small price to pay for the joy she took in her young family.

  Her life with Trace seemed good, gratifying and full. Out for an evening with friends, she would think, When we get home, Trace and I… The promise of his presence. Waking in the morning, she would turn to him.

  They had minor disagreements, lapses of attention to each other. Trace was busy with his work, she with caring for the children.

  She would have liked to share more of her life with him. One day, she attended a lecture at the Y—one of their “Strengthening the Family” series—in which the lecturer, a round-faced, beatifically smiling man with a fringe of dark hair around the white dome of his head, suggested that now that relationships were no longer held together by economic need, the criteria hinged on meeting one another’s emotional needs. The primary exchange under this new god, Communication, could be expressed by, “This is what it feels like to be me. What does it feel like to be you?” Listening, skeptical, she was surprised to feel her eyes sting. She told Trace about the lecture. “We don’t talk much,” she said. “Not in that way.”

  He seemed mystified. “What would you like to talk about?”

  “Tell me how you feel about things.”

  He put his arms around her. “I feel that I love you.” His hands slipped to her waist, reached under her sweater.

  She clutched at his wrists. “That’s not always what I want!”

  For a while, he would remember when he came in to ask, “How are you feeling? How was your day?” He was already pacing around, putting things away, glancing at the newspaper headlines.

  In despair, she would say, “I went to the store. I took the children to the dentist.” To his matter-of-factness, she could not bring her tenuous feelings—delight at Annie’s conversation with a cardinal outside the window, her ambivalence about career. Was it devotion to the children—or inertia—that kept her so tied to them? Her issues seemed suddenly insignificant, hardly there. It was too risky, knowing his eyes would grow distant, his attention wander off.

  If sometimes she felt she gave more to the relationship than he did, she also drew on his strength. Feeling often that she had no edges to define herself, only the needs of other people, she was reassured by his independence: If he existed, so could she. They fed each other. As they moved into their thirties and then their forties and some of their friends’ marriages began to crumble, they would look at one another with gratitude that they were, after all this time, still intact. When her father became ill, she relied on Trace’s steadiness, was grateful for his comfort as, through six months, her father weakened, then died.

  It troubled her that he wasn’t closer to his sons and daughter. She told him, surprised at the intensity in her voice. “They’ll be grown and you’ll have missed it!” A few years and it would be just she and Trace again. Would he regret the decisions he had made? Would she regret hers?

  A beam of sunlight—they were well above the clouds now—fell on her lap. She closed the magazine and looked out the window, remembering the day last fall—it was soon after Philip had left for his first year away—when Annie came in from school, flushed with excitement. “My sculpture won first prize in the art contest!”

  “That’s wonderful!” Laura said. Annie had worked long hours on a figure of a young woman bent to a climb, a walking stick in one hand, a lumpy backpack strapped to her shoulders.

  “There’s going to be a reception the first night of the art show—that’s when I get my prize. You and Dad can come! I’ll have to decide what to wear!” She ran up to look at her wardrobe.

  At dinner, she told Trace, “I won a prize for my sculpture.”

  “Great! Is that something you’ve been working on?”

  “Dad!” Laura and Annie exchanged incredulous glances. “I’ve worked on it for weeks—the girl hiking. With the backpack. I’ve had it home practically every night. Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, quickly, trying to recover. But his eyes betrayed him. He didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Annie was suspicious now, expecting the worst. “There’s a reception next Tuesday night. You and Mom are invited.”

  A look of consternation came to his face. “Let me look at my book.” He took a small black appointment book from his coat pocket, flipped the pages. “I’m afraid I can’t,” he said. “But I expect Mother…” He looked toward Laura, his smile bright, expectant.

  “Why can’t you?” Annie demanded, leaning toward him, her hand a fist on the table. “You got a speech to give or something?”

  He seemed surprised. “A department meeting. I have to present my courses for next year. It’s the last meeting before the catalog goes to press.”

  “Can’t you have the meeting another time? Does it have to be Tuesday?” Her voice rose, querulous, piercing.

  His expression was calmly contrite. “The dean will be there. It’s been scheduled for months. There are lots of people involved.”

  Her hands flew into the air. “Well, can’t somebody else do it? Can’t you write it down and give it to somebody?”

  He shook his head, his composure unassailable. “There may be questions. I need to be there. I’m sorry. I’ll see the sculpture later.”

  Annie jumped up, threw her napkin to the floor. “You’ll never see it. I’ll smash it before I let you see it!” She stalked to the kitchen, her voice catching in a sob.

  Trace, too, stood, followed his daughter into the next room. “I’m sorry,” he entreated. “If I could avoid this meeting, I would. But it’s my job.”

  Annie turned, eyes blazing. “I know it’s your job. But it’s always something. It’s always Mom who does things with me. It’s never you. You don’t even remember the damn sculpture! It’s a wonder you know my name!”

  Trace straightened as though from a blow. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”

  “You don’t know
me! You never did!”

  He was dumbfounded. He looked at Laura, back at Annie. “What do you mean? I’ve always loved you.”

  “You’re never here for me! You never have been, not since I was a little girl. Not even then!”

  Her anger seemed boundless. Laura watched them, her heart aching for them both.

  No one spoke. Then Annie’s voice cut through the silence. “It’s always been this way,” she said. “But I’ve noticed it more with Philip gone.” For a second, her eyes flicked away from him. “I’ve only got another year and a half, then I’ll be gone, too. I’d like us to do better before I go.” She was crying now, her anger spent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his face white. But she had already left the room.

  As the weeks went by, Trace tried to be more attentive to his daughter—talking with her about college choices, bringing home books to help with a school project on tracing your family tree, a subject in which he had a lot of interest. For a while, things seemed better, but then Annie complained, “He’s just going through the motions. I’m afraid it’s too late for Dad and me.” She gave him back the genealogy books. “Here. I changed my mind. I’m switching to another project.”

  Trace, too, brought Laura his hurt and anger. “I’m knocking myself out trying to be a better father. She’s not giving me a chance.”

  Laura’s lips tightened. Impatience pushed against her rib cage. “What did I tell you? You waited too long. She’s complaining about a lot of years.” Seeing the stricken look in his eyes, she added, “Besides, she’s an adolescent, remember? It’s not easy, establishing your independence. Believe me, I know.”

  Which brought her mind back around to the question of Rachel, and what the week ahead might bring.

  Trace closed the door of his office, hung his raincoat on the coat tree in the corner, making sure the sleeves weren’t dripping water onto the pile of papers jutting from the nearby shelf, then walked to the window and looked out at the pouring rain.

  An airplane sounded overhead. Not Laura’s. She’d be well on her way by now.