by Nancy Thayer
“Mother,” Mandy said. “Michael’s father is a minister!”
“I know that. But he might agree with me. Marriage is so final.” Then Leigh smiled at herself, and stopped, considering her own divorced state. “Or it should be. At any rate, once you’re into it, it’s hell getting out—and I know, I know, you two think you’ll never want to be apart. But, Mandy, I felt the same way about your father once. Look, kids, it’s true that some people never do get smart, but over the centuries human beings have learned a few things. You have to admit that. And one of the things we’ve learned is that marriage is a hard job. The library is full of books about adolescent love—don’t bristle like that, you are still both adolescents! Now listen to me. Everyone falls passionately in love and wants to be absolutely attached to the other person, but this fades. I promise you, it fades. Every other person in the world will tell you that, even if they’re happily married—you can’t sustain passion. And it’s foolish to make a crucial decision when you’re in the throes of passion. Don’t badger me, Mandy. If you want me to consider all this seriously, you’ve got to lay off a bit. If you love each other so much, it will keep.”
“Mother,” Mandy said, “I know this is a lot to hit you with all at once. But I bet if you went back to those books in the library, those reference books you’re talking about, you’d find out that there is no one perfect age when people start doing things right. I don’t want to wait till I’m twenty-five to start working seriously as an artist. I want to start now—I have to start now if I’m going to get anywhere. And I can do it. My schoolwork is easy, I can do it with my left hand, and still have time and energy to do the sculpting I want to do. And if Michael were with me—”
“You’d be cooking dinner for Michael and doing his laundry!” Leigh snapped.
“He’d be cooking my dinner and doing my laundry!” Mandy said.
“Really?”
“Really,” Michael said, and smiled.
“Well,” Leigh said. “Well.” She stood up, restless with emotion. “I need a drink,” she said. She took her time, opening a new ice-cube tray, refilling the empty one, finding the jigger to measure the scotch, stirring the drink slowly. “Look,” she said finally, “this is so complicated. Let’s go into the living room. Maybe a change of scene will help.”
Once in the living room, with the lights turned on against the evening’s dark, they settled into sofas and chairs and looked at each other expectantly.
“Well, Mom?” Mandy said, and spontaneously grinned at her mother, as if to say, you can’t fool me, I know you’re on our side.
“All right,” Leigh said. “Let’s start over. Mandy and Michael, you say you want to get married. Mandy, you say you want to go to college and learn to sculpt. Michael, you say you want to drop out of school, do some manual labor, and keep house so Mandy can work. Am I right so far? Okay, now, let’s say that your parents, Michael, and Mandy’s father and I all want the same things: for you two to be happy, but also to—make something of your lives. Not to make any mistakes now that would ruin your lives.”
“I’m better since Mandy,” Michael said suddenly, eagerly. “I really am. I could tell my parents that, they’d have to admit it’s true. I mean they don’t know about Mandy, but—”
“You’re failing high school and you’re better since Mandy?”
Michael shrugged, grinned sheepishly. “Last year I did a lot of dumb things. Wrecked some cars. Took some drugs. I was feeling—trapped, I guess. Since Mandy, life looks different.”
Leigh was silent.
“Mother,” Mandy began.
“Sssh!” Leigh said, waving her hand. “I’m having an idea.” She sipped her drink, then said, “Here’s a thought. Michael, what do your parents want for you right now, this year? What simple thing?”
“They want me to finish high school, I guess,” Michael said. “They want me to get good grades.”
“All right,” Leigh said, “then promise them you’ll do it. Wait a minute, I’m not finished. Promise them you’ll make decent grades and finish high school. But do it in Northampton. You could move to Northampton, take an apartment with Mandy, live together for the rest of the school year and the summer. Then, if you still feel like it, get married. Michael, I think this is an excellent solution. It will give your parents what they want most, and enable you to do what you want most.”
“If Michael goes to school, how will we pay rent?” Mandy asked.
Leigh shrugged. “You’d both have to take part-time jobs, I suppose. If you’re serious about this, you’ll clean houses or wait tables in the evenings, on weekends—”
“That wouldn’t give us much time to be with each other,” Mandy said.
“Yes, well, welcome to real life,” Leigh replied. “Besides,” she added, “you can apply the dorm money to your rent, and—I’ll help out a little. Just a little. I don’t want you two setting up a playhouse and thinking it’s married life.”
“I think it might work,” Michael said, leaning forward. “Look, Mandy,” he said, because now Mandy looked worried, unconvinced. “We’d get to live together, sleep together all night, start our lives together. You were planning to sculpt on weekends anyway, you won’t want me hanging around then, I’ll be able to work while you’re at the studio.” He was silent for a moment, then turned to Leigh. “I don’t especially want to finish high school. I don’t see the value in it. But I know it’s something my parents really want. And I think I could do it easily, if I could be with Mandy. It would be like just another job. I think if I promised my parents I’d finish high school, they’d agree to let me live with Mandy. Not that they’re going to be crazy about the idea. Oh, God, it’s going to be a real war. It’s going to be awful.”
“Okay,” Leigh said, “I think we’ve gone as far as we should go. I think we should get your parents involved in this now—even if it is a war, Michael. Look, let’s call your parents. Let’s go over to your house and talk to them. It’s not fair otherwise, and, Michael, your parents are nice people. They’re intelligent, they’re kind. They might have some good ideas. Shall I call, or you?” Leigh noticed as she talked how white Michael had gone, and she wondered if it were possible that any person could be frightened of someone as compassionate and intelligent as Peter Taylor. Well, she supposed, parents and children never do see each other as outsiders do, because something—some intimate knowing love—always gets in the way, distorting things.
“It would be better if I called, I guess,” Michael said. He rose, went into the kitchen to use the phone, came back. “Okay,” he said. “Dad’s gone but should be back soon. Mom says to come on over. I guess we should go.”
“Look, you two,” Leigh said as she rose, “don’t be so—so serious about all of this. It will all work out somehow. The important thing is that you’ve found each other, and really love each other, which is a rare thing. Don’t get depressed if you can’t have everything you want immediately. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you.” But again as she spoke, their clear young eyes took on that glazy barricade, and Leigh thought how no one ever believes that he’s got his whole life ahead of him, or if he does believe it, it doesn’t really matter. Today is what always matters, this day, this week, this month. When you’re young, you want it all now. Growing old is perhaps just a matter of learning how to arrange your life so that you can wait for what you want in reasonable comfort. Leigh sighed. She had thought she would have a quiet weekend with the Sunday Times, and instead she had a daughter who wanted to get married to a boy who didn’t even want to finish high school. Leigh put on her coat, gathered up her car keys.
“Hey, Mom,” Mandy said as they all walked out to the car, “you didn’t ask the one question all mothers are supposed to ask if their daughters say they want to get married right away.”
Leigh stopped in her tracks. “Mandy,” she said.
Mandy laughed delightedly, as if she had just made a wonderful joke. “No, Mom, I’m not,” she said. “But I thou
ght I’d give you a thrill.”
“Listen,” Leigh said, sliding behind the wheel of the car, “you’ve given me all the thrills I can take for one day.”
“Well,” Michael said, sliding into the backseat next to Mandy, slamming the door heartily, “forward into the fray!”
Goodness, Leigh thought, pleased, he knows the word “fray.” She smiled, and headed the car toward Peter Taylor’s house.
“Wilbur, are you all right?”
Wilbur opened his eyes, stared up at the nurse who was leaning over his bed. What was her name? “Selma,” he said aloud.
Selma held his hand and looked at her watch, checking his pulse. “I thought you were choking,” she told him. “You gave me a scare.”
“I think I was laughing,” Wilbur said, and began to make the low chuckling sound that had frightened Selma. “I was thinking about a friend who died. His widow, actually. Want to hear the story, even if it’s a little racy?”
Selma gently replaced his arm on the bed and leaned companionably against the bars. “Sure,” she said.
“Well, Norma and I have been friends with the Watsons for oh, I’d say thirty years now. Horace and Flora Watson. He’s a plumber—was a plumber, he’s passed on—and we got to know them through church. You couldn’t meet a nicer couple, but you never would think that either one of them was much to write home about as far as looks go. Just nice plain New England folk. Well, Horace is about my age. Was. He died about six months ago. For the past two or three years he’d been ill, and he’d sort of shrunk, you know how you do when you get older. But he was always too stubborn to admit it, or I guess he didn’t want to face the truth about how old and sick he was. But he used to go around looking so damned awful. All his clothes were too big for him. The sleeves of his jackets hung to the middle of his hands and his pants bagged and trailed on the ground; he looked like an old tramp. He’d lost all his hair and most of his teeth; he was sixty-eight, and not what you’d call a pretty sight. Well, he died, and we were sorry to see him go.
“About two weeks after his funeral, Norma and I had Flora, his widow, over for dinner. She was still grieving, of course. So after dinner, while we were having coffee, she said, in her sweet little old sad voice, ‘Well, I went through some of Horace’s things before we buried him. I came across a picture of me that Horace always did love. An 8 ½ x 11 photo, just of my face. It was his favorite picture of me, I think. I took the picture down to the funeral home and went in to where Horace lay in his coffin and placed it face-down on his fly. He was buried that way; that’s why we had a closed coffin. You don’t think that was sacrilegious, do you?’ ”
Selma burst out laughing. “My, my,” she said, “what a sweet story. They must have been happy together right till the end.”
“Yes,” Wilbur said, “it makes you feel good to think about it, doesn’t it? Though I’ll tell you, Norma and I had a tough time keeping a straight face when Flora told us that. Norma finally composed herself and said, ‘No, I don’t think so, Flora, and I’m sure Horace would have liked it.’ What else could she have said?”
“Would you like me to get Norma for you now?” Selma asked, fussing with Wilbur’s covers.
“No,” Wilbur said, for his eyes were closing in spite of himself. “I’m feeling a little sleepy. I think I’ll just rest a little first, a few minutes. Then I’d like to see Norma.”
“Whatever you want,” Selma said.
Whatever I want, Wilbur thought, closing his eyes, letting go of his grip on the world so that he seemed to float. If only that were true, whatever I want. What would that be, if I could have just one thing right now? One thing. I won’t ask for my youth back, for my liver spots and wrinkles to disappear, for Norma and me to be young again. I won’t ask for Ricky never to have died. What would I ask for if I could ask for whatever I want—but something reasonable? To see God’s face? No, I’m not that brave. To see Ricky when I die? Well, if everything I’ve believed all my life is true, I’ll see him anyway, somehow. Not to die? Everyone has to die.
I know what I want.
There was a game I played when I was seventeen, just finishing high school. We all thought we were so worldly-wise then, so smooth. I hadn’t met Norma yet. I mostly hung around with the guys—Virgil and Henry and Luther. I wonder what happened to them. We had a club, what did we call ourselves? The Yankee Clippers. We were the smoothest guys in high school. That was 1928. Hmm.
One Saturday night in early May when we were all feeling full of piss and vinegar because school was almost over and we all knew we were going to graduate, we had a party over at Virge’s house. What did we drink—beer? We thought we were pretty wild. And those girls were there, hanging around in their cotton frocks, looking shy and brash all at the same time. The moon was shining; we were all outdoors. I can still remember how the world had that green smell of new grass and spring.
We all sat on Virge’s big front porch drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and showing off to the girls. There must have been about twenty of us there. Then George Wilson’s older brother, who had been off to college for two years till he flunked out, got us going on this game. I suppose teenagers nowadays would think it pretty silly, but back then it was exciting.
All the boys went behind the house. In the backyard the house blocked off the moonlight, so it was darker there, and the grass was taller. It felt wild. One by one we’d get a girl, tie a blindfold on her, and gently lead her around to the back. Then we’d tell her she could join the Yankee Clipper Club if she played the game right.
“Take off one item you’re wearing that you won’t wear to bed tonight,” we said.
Well, they’d giggle and titter and wrap their arms around themselves and look silly, but they all wanted to join the Yankee Clippers—no girls had ever joined it before. So finally they’d take off a shoe. We’d say, “Now take off another item you’re wearing that you won’t wear to bed tonight.” Off would come another shoe. “Now take off another item you won’t be wearing to bed tonight,” we’d say, and then they’d start to get worried. If they wore jewelry, they’d take that off, and if they had sweaters on over their blouses, they’d take the sweater off. But right about then was when they’d panic and say, “Well, I don’t think this is a very nice game, and I don’t want to be in your stupid club!”
Bobbeen DuPont was one of the girls who wanted to be in the club, and when my turn came to go around to the front yard and bring a girl to the back, I knew I just couldn’t stand to put her through it. It seemed mean to tease them like that, and even though it seemed to us they could easily guess the secret, no one ever did. I suppose those girls were too frightened to think straight. But I didn’t want to put Bobbeen through all that worry, so after I tied the blindfold around her eyes and was leading her around the house, I put my arm around her and pulled her to me and whispered, “It’s the blindfold. Take off the blindfold.”
What I want is for someone to do just that for me: to come put his arm around me, to whisper just a few words that give me a hint, a clue. I don’t just want it. I expect it. I don’t know if the guide will come in the shape of a man, a woman, or an angel, but I do expect a human shape, for we are created in the Lord’s image. I would hope that it would be Ricky. It would be so nice if I could hear Ricky’s voice saying, “Come on, Dad, it’s all right.” But there’s got to be someone. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” That’s what He promised, and I’ll be damned if I’ll die without some kind of guide at least touching my arm, at least giving me some kind of sign.
But all I can hear is the beeping of those medical machines and Selma’s whispery noises as she fiddles around the bed. I guess my time hasn’t come yet, after all.
It was as if he had become a ghost and was floating in air slightly above his body, looking down, watching. The fire and the brandy had no power to warm him. His own skin seemed made of the same clear glass as the snifter he held in his hands,
as if he had stopped being human. He was so still, so cold. He looked down upon himself, sitting there by the fire, and felt pity for himself, and regret, and a great fondness. You damned fool.
All of his life he had worked hard, so hard that it seemed to him he had achieved as much command over his fate as any man could. Looking back at his life, it seemed to him that only once had he lost control so swiftly. It had been so long ago, and now Ron knew that it had not been significant—but then, then it had seemed overwhelming, not merely the most important thing in life, but the only important thing. Had he ever really been so young?
He had been in high school, playing center on the varsity basketball team. His senior year they’d had a great team, one of the best, and they went to the state semifinals. With the score tied and just six seconds left in the game, Ron had taken control of the ball, dribbled down court to his spot, and with the cool perfection attained through a thousand and one practice shots, sent the ball spinning straight up and over to the basket. Unbelievably, this one time, the ball did not go in. It wavered on the rim and fell back, down into the hands of the opposing team’s star player, and the next few moments seemed to move in slow motion to Ron. He was too dismayed to move, except to turn and watch as nine other men raced back up court and, while the crowd in the bleachers roared in ecstasy, Tommy Henderson made the final score of the game, winning the semifinals for his school and his team with that one shot as surely as Ron had lost it for his.
This isn’t real, this can’t be true, Ron had thought, standing dumbfounded as the rest of the gym went into a frenzy of noise and action. This isn’t fair, this isn’t right, this isn’t how it is supposed to end. He had not been able to think that life could continue past this point. For all he knew or cared, the whole world could come to a halt right then. There was nothing else to live for. It had not seemed to him that he had done anything wrong: he had stood where he always stood, and tossed the ball with the exact gentle force he always used—no, he had not made a mistake. It was only possible that the world itself had moved minutely, the basket, the court, the fieldhouse, shifting imperceptibly just a half inch to the left. He had stood rooted to the boards, struck dumb with amazement at the arbitrary movements of the world, until finally another team member had come over and wrapped his arm around his shoulder and led him off to the locker room.
