Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

  “Fine,” she said. “I hear you had a good time at the prom.”

  “That’s my girl.” He was looking at Annie, smiling, his brown eyes warm, glowing, oblivious to anyone in the room but her.

  Laura glanced over at Trace. He was staring down at the table. He didn’t look up.

  Later, after a dinner eaten in haste—Gordon sharing a few bites of the ragout and Gordon and Annie gone to watch the movie, Laura and Trace started to clear up the dishes.

  Laura held a plate under the faucet. “Was there some reason. Annie and Gordon were so delayed getting here—other than that everything took longer than they’d thought?”

  “I was about to tell you.” His voice was tense. “They had to go to Gordon’s first. Then, as they were leaving, Annie got something caught on your pearls and they broke and scattered all over the floor. They were already late, but that finished it.”

  “Oh my.”

  “I’ve taken them to the jeweler to be restrung.”

  “Thank you. I hope she got them all. She didn’t mention that—the pearls breaking.”

  “I’m sure she would have,” he said.

  They heard a peal of laughter from the den. “Well, I’m glad they had a good time,” she said, “even so.”

  He was hanging cooking spoons on the Peg-Board. “You didn’t ask about my talk—how it went.”

  “Your talk?”

  “To welcome Dave Ignatius.”

  “Oh.” She was wiping up the counter. Her hand tensed. “Well, how did it go?”

  “Very well. Actually, I was quite a hit. I wish you’d been there.”

  She whirled to face him. “I wouldn’t have been there, remember? I’d have been home, seeing Annie off to the prom!”

  *

  In the next room, Annie and Gordon sat slumped back on the couch, Gordon’s arm around Annie’s shoulder, her legs in their faded jeans slung across his lap, her feet dangling above the moss green carpet. The room was dark except for the flickering images of the movie.

  Annie reached for the remote and turned the sound one notch lower. “God, you sure showed up in the nick of time. I thought my mother was going to blow a gasket!”

  “Huh?” Gordon was watching the TV.

  “She just found out my father wasn’t here to take the pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “The prom pictures, dodo.” She slid her hand in front of his eyes. “You remember the prom pictures?”

  He pulled her hand away. “I’m sure my dad got some good ones.”

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, my father had promised and then he went off to make a speech, and my mom is in outer space because he was going to be here and see me off and tell her about it since she couldn’t be here herself on account of my grandmother’s birthday. Sometimes I can hardly wait to get out of this house. Especially with my brothers gone.”

  He didn’t answer, and she said, “Are you listening to me?”

  “Sure. Your father couldn’t take the pictures. Though there should have been plenty of time, if you hadn’t busted your pearls all over the place….” He chuckled softly and his voice drifted off.

  Annie swung her legs off his lap, planted her feet squarely on the floor. “If we’d come here in the first place, like we were going to… But no. Your folks wanted to go to a movie. Like, it was only our high school prom. A movie! Give me a break!”

  “Hey, sweetheart.” He turned his attention to her now and patted her knee. “Hey! I’m sorry we didn’t get here before your dad left. If I’d known we’d be so late, I wouldn’t have pushed for going to my place first. We goofed on that part. But the prom was fun. You looked terrific. The music was great. What’s the big deal?”

  “The deal is, my mom has this fond hope that after almost seventeen years my dad is gonna start paying attention to me. Then, whammo, it happens again—even though this time it really wasn’t his fault—and she goes berserk. She should cool it and give up. You’d think he’d tried to murder me, the way she was carrying on.”

  She settled back against him, tucked her legs up beside her. “It’s just that home’s not the greatest place to be now. I wish my brothers were still around.” She brightened. “Though my mom said Bart and Paula—she’s Bart’s girlfriend—might move here next year—to Woodbridge, not this house. Boy, would I love that. Mom would, too. She misses my brothers as much as I do, almost.” As an afterthought, she said, “My dad probably doesn’t notice they’re gone.”

  For a while, they watched in silence.

  “By the way,” Gordon said, “I finally got around to asking my folks about our end-of-the-year camping trip. They said no dice. I kind of thought they would.”

  Now Annie sat up, looked at him directly. “Just like that. What did they say?”

  “They said, ‘You crazy? That’s nothing for kids your age to be doing. ’”

  “No discussion—like, what could happen that couldn’t happen anyway? Did you stick up for your rights?”

  He shook his head, his eyes back on the screen. “Are you kidding? In my family, no discussion, period. You think you got problems. My dad says, ‘You do it our way or you get out.’”

  She sat back, sighing. He could at least have tried to talk to his parents. Parents were so obstinate, stuck in the Dark Ages. At least hers would talk to her. Sometimes too much, almost. Wanting to know what she was doing, how she felt about stuff. At least her mom did. Maybe it would be better to be in a family like Gordon’s. But she didn’t think so. She just needed some space.

  She thought of Paula again. They’d met her last fall on a trip to visit Bart. If they came down here, it would almost be like having a sister. She wished they’d come right away, but Paula’s father had died of a heart attack right after Christmas and Bart said she wanted to spend the summer with her mom.

  At the thought of Paula’s father dying, her eyes stung with tears. If her own father should die, she’d feel so awful. Worse, because she knew he was a fine man and brilliant, and somewhere in the back of his knotted-up head he probably loved her. But as for having the least idea what made her tick—forget it. It made her sad—all the years they’d missed and how soon she’d be going, and they’d still be strangers to each other.

  Gordon, who had been running his hand up and down her arm, reached to undo the buttons of her shirt. He leaned close, breathing into her neck. “How about we go to your room and shut the door and turn on some music?”

  She lifted his hand from her blouse. “Not while they’re in the house! Besides, I want to watch the movie.”

  For as long as she could, Laura refused to consider seriously the possibility that Annie was having sex with Gordon. As big a step as that was, as much as she knew they wouldn’t want her to? Annie wouldn’t, would she?

  One evening when Trace was at a meeting, she and Annie went to an old movie. In it, a fluttery woman, her face blinking with the gray-and-white flecks of old films, told her importuning fiancé she wanted to wait until their wedding night. The audience of students laughed uproariously.

  In the car on the way home, Annie said, “I suppose you and Dad waited—till you got married, I mean?”

  “We certainly did. We didn’t even consider anything else. Does that seem impossible to you?”

  “Sort of, yes.”

  “Well, we couldn’t have done it differently, being us. And it seems to have worked out all right.”

  “How about now?” Annie said. “What would you do now?”

  She’d wondered it herself often enough. “I don’t know. I think I’d still want to be married first. On the other hand, I might—I suppose there’s no way I can know. It’s a different time.”

  In the light from the passing streetlight, Annie turned to her. “I know you, Mom. I bet you wouldn’t wait.”

  She wondered what to say—she who had taken years of being married to feel comfortable about her own body, realizing it was not something to hide and that when you did reveal it,
you hoped the one you loved would make the necessary allowances. Sometimes, still, it was hard for her to believe Trace found her as desirable as he said; that it was not only the indiscriminate urgings of his own body that sent him to her so often, it was also the drawing power of her own, the legitimate hunger of her own adequate flesh, given to him, fed from him, their games the games of allies and not of adversaries pretending to be lovers until they should be found out and sent from the room.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t,” she said to Annie. “I don’t know. There’s the whole issue of safety, too,” she added as an afterthought, and a lame one at that. The danger of disease didn’t disappear just because you got married. She waited for Annie to challenge her.

  But she didn’t. They drove on a little farther and Annie said, “Sometimes I’d like to tell you other things about myself, but I don’t know if I dare.”

  She made a sound of assent in her throat. She didn’t want to answer too quickly, too lightly. “I don’t know what to tell you, honey. I’m willing to risk it if you are.”

  “I’ll see.”

  In a few minutes, they were home. Gordon had called. He asked that Annie call him back. They talked for an hour. By then, it was late. No more was said about the conversation in the car.

  Later, when Laura and Trace were getting ready for bed, she said to him, “I had a significant conversation with Annie, after the movie.”

  “Oh?” He was running through some circulars and bills that had come in the day’s mail.

  “Could you put those down?”

  “I’m listening to every word.” There was an edge of impatience to his voice, but he put the stack of mail on the dresser.

  She recounted the conversation, then said, “She was almost going to tell me something.” She paused. “You don’t think Annie is, do you?”

  “Is what?”

  “Having sex. With Gordon.”

  “I hope not. But if she is, I hope she’s protecting herself.” He was scanning the mail again. “I’ve read that, even today, a large proportion of our students who are sexually active don’t use condoms. Or any contraceptive at all.”

  “Trace! She’s not ‘a large proportion of our students.’ She’s your daughter!”

  “I know she’s my daughter. You wonder if Annie is having sex with Gordon. I hope she isn’t. I don’t know. I do hope, if she is, she’s—”

  She interrupted him. “I’m sure if she is, she’s using something! We talked about it tons of times, the kids and I. They didn’t agree on premarital sex, but they did agree on no accidental children. And I’m sure they know the danger of AIDS. There! Do you feel better?”

  “I don’t get it, Laura. What’s the matter?”

  “How can you be so damn clinical about the whole thing?”

  “But we don’t even know,” he said.

  *

  And then Annie told her.

  It was the week after the prom, the last week of school. They were only going half days, and Annie had stayed home with bad cramps. Laura brought her the heating pad, rolled the television into her room, brought some soup in for them to eat together. After lunch, Annie lay on her stomach on the heating pad and Laura sat by her, her fingers playing with Annie’s hair, fanning it over the jungle-print pillowcase.

  “Mom?” Annie said, her voice muffled by a mound of sheet lying close to her face.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m on the pill.” She lifted her head. “Gordon and I…” Her voice drifted off.

  “Gordon and you?” Laura said, trying to hold it at bay for a minute.

  “Yes. Four months ago, I went to the public health clinic.”

  “You did?” The image of Annie sitting in a dingy, glaring waiting room, going there on her own, to such a cold, impersonal place. Among strangers. “Oh, Annie!”

  Annie rolled over, put her hands under her head. “I feel very good about myself as a woman.”

  Laura nodded in mute agreement—but to what? The truth only. “What about AIDS?” She blurted it out—a desperate move.

  Annie smiled, shook her head. “Gordon has never messed around, Mom.”

  She nodded, still stunned. She couldn’t imagine Gordon “messing around,” either, but these days who could tell?

  “I’m sure you’re not pleased,” Annie said. “But it’s my body, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. It’s always been your body. But it’s a shock to me. I didn’t know.”

  “Well, we didn’t exactly make a public announcement,” Annie said.

  “No, I suppose you didn’t.” The world seemed spinning around, the room, the bed. “I’m going to lie on the carpet a minute, okay?”

  “You can lie on the bed with me if you want.”

  “Thanks.” She started to cry, quietly, covering her face with her hands. “I’m glad you’re being careful. Do Bart and Philip know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose they think it’s just dandy?”

  “They didn’t say. They respect my right—”

  “They’re not your mother. I respect your right, too. It’s the judgment—”

  “I’m sixteen,” Annie said.

  “Yes, I know you’re sixteen.” Careful, something inside her warned. She trusted you to tell you this. Don’t drive her away.

  She sat up. “Well, darling, is it going all right for you? Sex, I mean.”

  “Mmmhmm!” Annie said.

  * * *

  Later in the afternoon, back in Annie’s room, she asked, “What about Dad?”

  “What about him?”

  “Will you tell him yourself? I don’t want to know and have him not know.”

  “You tell him. If he wants to talk to me about it, he can.”

  Laura told him. He went to Annie’s room. In a few moments, she followed him down the hall. The door was open. She heard him say, “I’m proud of you, being responsible.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t disgrace you,” Annie said.

  His laugh was forced. “That wasn’t exactly my first concern.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to disrupt your life.”

  “Disrupt my life? You’re an important part of my life.”

  “Dad! Since when? It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?”

  Grimly, Laura retreated down the hall. In a few moments, she heard Trace’s steps leaving Annie’s room.

  He came in. “Well?” she said.

  “I can’t say I’m too surprised. She’s been very mature, getting birth control pills, insisting on protection.”

  “But she’s so young! Our little girl…”

  “Open your eyes, Laura. She hasn’t been our little girl for some time.”

  *

  Their new knowledge of Annie cleared the air. From time to time, Laura found herself talking with Annie about sex. Yes, sex was a great experience. One day Annie said, “The first time—it was in my room—I called your name.” Laura was inordinately touched.

  But at times, gazing out the window, her pencil poised over her drawings, or going by store displays of schoolgirl dresses or musical jewel boxes with tutu’d dolls that turned to the music of “Dance, Ballerina, Dance,” tears came to her eyes and she thought, What happened? How did it turn out like this?

  All spring, she had felt restless. Was it her age, her father’s death, the children’s growing up—some hormonal or psychic clock that seemed wound too tight and was ticking away? She knew that her daughter’s adventurousness made her want more for herself, too. More what? More professional accomplishments? To go back to school? More closeness with Trace? Better sex? The sensuality of the young was certainly a reminder of past options and passing time. Jealous? A little, yes, how beautiful they were, so much ahead of them.

  Summer was coming, and with it, vacation, a change of pace.

  “Here you are!” Lillian stepped down from the back deck of the big stucco house overlooking Lake Michigan and ran toward them, her long denim skirt skimming the top of the grass. Her white
shirt was tied at the waist with a red kerchief, and a pair of sunglasses dangled from one hand. She reached Laura and they flung their arms around each other, giddy with laughter and delight. Then hugs for Trace and Bart and Philip and Annie, then back to Laura. Arms linked, the two sisters, the others following, walked toward the house, under trees, past the rope hammock, then around the end of the house, toward blue sky and dipping gulls, the glittering water of the lake.

  “Is everybody here?” Laura asked, pulling sunglasses from her purse to shield her eyes.

  “On the porch,” Lillian said. “Howard and Irene got here an hour ago. Irene is settling the baby for a nap. Everybody else is out there. I would have been, too, but I came in to take the cake out of the freezer. Then I saw you.” Lillian turned again, her smile white against her tanned face.

  “Mother here, too?” Laura asked, and without waiting for an answer, “How is she?”

  “She’s fine.” Lillian gave her sister’s elbow a reassuring squeeze.

  They had almost reached the porch. The blue-and-white-striped awning flapped gently in the breeze. In front of the house, the carpet of grass extended toward the lake and the low, slatted fence. Beyond that, the bank dropped off and the stairway sloped down to the shore. A few sailboats bobbed in the water and at the distant horizon a long ore-carrier tug sat like a dark block of wood against the blue-green sky.

  “Here they are!” Lillian called out, and Richard, and Howard and Irene, and Richard and Lillian’s girls, Elsa and Christine and Jennie, and little Timmy, and Howard and Irene’s ten-year-old twins, Danny and Carter, all moved toward them with hugs and greetings. There were exclamations about Bart’s just having graduated and about Philip’s having grown a beard, and how Annie was now taller than her mother. Soon Annie and Elsa—who were only a year apart and always best friends at these family gatherings—had gone off to one side, followed closely by Christine and Jennie, who didn’t want to miss anything the big girls were saying. Howard and Trace were starting on academia stories and Richard was asking people what they’d like to drink. “Soda? Lemonade? Spritzer?” Laura saw Rachel at the center of the porch, pulling herself to her feet, her shoulders bent with the effort of standing, a sweater covering her arms even on so warm a day, the hem of her dress lifting from the floor as she slowly straightened herself. Rachel’s face was intent on her task, but already she was looking through the crowd.