by Jeanne Ray
I looked at my watch. “Your program is on,” I said. It was like throwing a pork chop for a dog. That was all it took. My mother dropped her line of reasoning and went scurrying down the hall toward Oprah.
I could see my mother’s point, but I thought it was more important to stick up for my husband than it was to agree with her. Sure, Sam wasn’t himself, but were any of us? What about my mother, who had suddenly gone from being awkward and indecisive to being someone who was extremely certain of what she wanted? Or Camille, whose enormous personality was no match for my father’s? I hadn’t seen her lose her temper once since my father’s arrival and not, I suspected, because she was any happier. I thought back to my stress-reduction class. The instructor said that one of the most challenging things that could happen to a family was to gain or lose a member. “Think of a mobile,” he told us. “You take a piece off, you put a piece on, none of the other pieces are in balance anymore.” So Sam wasn’t in balance. Wasn’t that normal?
Of course, abnormality is easier to take in normal times, which these weren’t. Sam was also out of a job. I couldn’t help but think that something had happened to him on that drive to Des Moines. He had left the house feeling frantic and resolved to find work and had come home completely at peace with his unemployment. I wanted him to have some peace. I also wanted him to get a job, but I figured there would be plenty of time to discuss that in the future.
But now that my father lived with us, there was very little danger of having to wait around for things to be discussed.
“I’ve been trying my best to talk Sam into going to medical school,” my father began at dinner that night. I was sitting next to my father, spearing chunks of paprika chicken and mushrooms onto his fork.
“Not medical school again,” Camille said, pushing her plate away. She was wearing a tiny tie-dyed T-shirt with dizzying spirals of fuchsia and aquamarine. Every time I saw it I thought peace.
“Eat your dinner,” my mother said.
“Don’t panic,” Sam told her. “There’s no chance of me going to medical school.”
Sam was fifty-three. I figured two years for pre-med, four years for medical school, three years for internship and residency. That put him comfortably past sixty. God help us if he wanted to specialize.
“I had never realized what a smart man your husband is,” my father said. “I didn’t get to see enough of him over the years. If I had had a son, a son who wasn’t musically inclined, I would have wanted him to be a doctor. I think it is a very noble profession.”
“But wait a minute, you had a daughter.” Camille squinted at him, her burgeoning feminist logic telling her that something was fishy. “Why didn’t you want Mom to be a doctor?”
I was incredibly touched that either Camille thought I could have been a doctor or that she was sticking up for me. I was also interested in the answer.
“I guess I never thought about that,” my father said in a puzzled voice.
“What a surprise,” my mother said into her orange juice.
My father opened his mouth to make a smart comeback and I took the opportunity to give him another bite of his dinner. He didn’t think his daughter who was now cutting his meat was smart enough to be a doctor, but how do you say that at the dinner table?
“Even if I did want to be a doctor,” Sam said, holding up his hands, “and believe me, I don’t, I know what direction health care is going in. I wouldn’t want any part of it.”
I put down the fork. “You mean you don’t want to work in hospital administration anymore?” I tried to keep my voice steady. I wasn’t sure what else Sam knew how to do.
Sam looked behind him as if the answer were floating somewhere in the back of the kitchen. “I don’t think so.”
“What about the job in Des Moines?”
Camille let her fork drop with a clang against her plate. “We’re moving to Des Moines?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t pan out.”
Camille sighed with relief. “I would die in Des Moines.”
“Did you ask your friend there about other hospitals?” Had I been counting on that in the back of my mind without even realizing it? A fallback plan in Iowa?
“It’s so old,” my father said, offering Sam an exit from the awkward moment. “He’s done all of that. What would the point be in going back and doing it again?”
“Money,” my mother said.
My father looked at her with utter exasperation. “After all these years I would have thought you would have learned a new song. Money, money, money. That’s what tore us apart, you know. You never had any vision. You thought there was only one means to measure the value of a man.”
“I thought our daughter should eat regularly,” my mother said. “Call me old-fashioned.”
“A complete lack of vision,” my father reiterated.
“So why haven’t you found another job if you think change is such a vital part of life?” my mother asked.
“Because I still enjoy my job. I’m still good at it. Fortunately, playing the piano is one field where you get credit for being older. People look at you and think you must be accomplished. They see some young kid playing and it makes them uncomfortable having a cocktail, like they might be corrupting him. They see me and think, That old guy has been in a bar all these years and he still looks pretty good. I inspire people to order up.”
“So what do you think you might be interested in?” I said to Sam. I passed him a bowl of sautéed spinach. It was his favorite. I wanted him to know I was thinking of him.
My father tapped his foot against the floor, which is how those without hands get attention. “You can’t ask those kinds of questions now. A man has to find himself. Sam has been supporting this family for twenty-five years. Now he has to take some time, learn to listen to himself again. He has to take some time to think about the direction he wants to go in.”
“Dad, it hasn’t been twenty-five years. I was a teacher—”
But he wasn’t interested. “You understand my point. A little more chicken please.”
I cut off another bite and fed it to him.
“So Dad doesn’t have to work anymore?” Camille said. She seemed genuinely interested in the conversation now that it was clear we weren’t going to Iowa. I could tell she was listening when she stopped twirling her hair through her fingers.
“Of course I’m going to work again, honey. Your grandpa is just saying that it’s important to think things through.”
“That’s right.” My father nodded in support.
“So what if you don’t go to work again anytime soon? What if it takes you a long time to find yourself or whatever it is you’re doing? Where do we get money until then?” Camille’s voice was shaking a little and I couldn’t tell if she was frightened or angry at the thought of not being supported.
“Why is the money always the man’s responsibility?” my father said. “Why is that Sam’s burden? Isn’t it enough that he’s provided for you all these years? When I was your age I had been supporting myself for years. I didn’t ask anyone else to take care of me.”
“Your grandfather was hatched alone on a beach,” my mother explained to Camille. “He kicked his way free, ate his own shell, and then slithered off to conquer the world without a moment’s assistance from another reptile.”
My parents had a remarkable ability to simply not hear one another most of the time. It was as if they both spoke in a frequency that the other one was incapable of registering. “Don’t you think you’re old enough to get a job?” my father said to Camille.
“Um,” Camille said, looking down at her plate. “I guess. I don’t know.”
“Do you think she should drop out of high school? Start washing cars?” my mother said. “Stop giving that old man food. Look at you. You’re a fine one to be giving lectures on independence and self-reliance. You can’t wipe your own mouth.”
“At least I had a dream,” my father said. “At least I didn’t play the piano lik
e I had never stepped foot outside a Methodist church my entire life.”
Suddenly they heard each other.
“Here we go. You think you play the piano better than I do. That’s where your superiority comes from. You think just because you’re banging it out in some smoky gin joint, you’re making art, and because I’m playing in a school with children, I’m the drudge, the talentless drone. But I’ll tell you something, Guy, you were never half the pianist that I am, and if you had any wrists I’d prove it to you right now!” My mother was standing up, leaning over the table toward my father.
“I’d play with my toes!” my father roared. “If you want a competition I could beat you without my hands.”
Camille sat with her mouth open, looking from one side of the table to the other as if she were watching a tennis match.
Bang it out? Gin joint? Toes? Who were these people who claimed to be related to me, and what were they doing living in my house? My nerves were shot. I imagined my kitchen a crime scene, the neighbors coming in and finding all of us torn apart as if a pack of angry wolverines had broken in through the back door. People could not live like this, not for the amount of time it took bones to heal. Someone, something, needed to restore order to our lives.
“Cake,” I said.
“Cake?” Sam said.
“What kind of cake?” my father asked.
“Apple spice.”
“When did you make a cake?” my mother said. “I didn’t see you make a cake.”
“Mom,” Camille moaned, but I raised my hand to stop her.
I got up and took the cake out from under its cake-shaped cover. I had made it at three o’clock in the morning in a desperate attempt to comfort myself. And it was an enormous comfort, standing alone in the kitchen in my nightgown, sifting fresh ground nutmeg with allspice and cloves by the little light over the sink. I peeled the apples with ridiculous care, taking the skins off in long, even ribbons that spiraled down to the floor without breaking. I didn’t think of any of them while I peeled those apples. I didn’t work anything out in my mind. I just relaxed into the creaming of butter and sugar, the sweet expansion of every egg. I had hoped the mixer wouldn’t wake anyone up. The last thing I had wanted was company.
I cut off big, hulking slices and slid them onto dessert plates. The apples were soft and golden, the cake was a rust color. I hadn’t even cleared the table. I just pushed one course aside and made room for another, then I dropped into my chair and started to eat. I did nothing to help my father and Camille got up to feed him his cake. For a few peaceful minutes we said nothing to one another. We simply ate.
“You always could cook, Ruthie,” my father said dreamily. “Especially cakes.”
“She didn’t get it from me,” my mother said.
My father shook his head. “Sure she did, Hollis. You were a fine cook. I remember you made the best lemon meringue pie.”
“Ruth probably made it.”
“This was before Ruth,” my father said. Suddenly there was so much kindness in his voice that everyone at the table lifted their heads and looked at him. My mother looked away.
The truth was, my mother was neither a good cook nor a bad one. Her food was economical and nutritious. It reheated well. She did not believe in luxury or embellishment, so she saw little cause for baking.
“Camille, did you know that when your mother was a little girl she baked her own birthday cakes?”
“That’s weird,” Camille said.
“At first she baked birthday cakes for all her friends in school and then one year, I think she was nine, I was having a party for her and she asked if she could bake her own cake. Nine was very young, I thought. It was a complicated cake. I don’t remember what kind it was now. I think she made it up.”
“Do you remember what kind of cake it was, Mom?”
I shook my head no, but of course I remembered. The first cake I ever made for myself was a landmark in my personal baking history. It was a lemon glow chiffon that I sliced into twelve half-inch layers, spread with strawberry jam, reassembled, and covered in seven-minute icing. Looking back, such a cake would appear to have been a monstrosity, but to a nine-year-old it was a glamorous, ambitious cake that had the aura of something very French, even though I had no idea what that meant at the time.
“Well, that’s what your talent is, baking cakes,” my father said, his voice suddenly heavy with disinterest. “You never got very far on the piano, did you?”
“Ruth plays nicely,” my mother said.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t get very far.”
I shaved off a few thin slices for seconds. I knew how to cut the cake in a way that no one would object to having a little bit more. As for the piano, my father was wrong. I could play, I just couldn’t play in front of other people. I may have inherited some of my parents’ talent but I got none of their stage presence. Some of the most soul-carving moments of my childhood centered around group recitals where I had to play “Clair de Lune” to a living room full of bored parents and restless children. The hours before those small, humiliating performances were the only times I seriously considered running away from home. But I played in the locked practice rooms in college every night after I left the library, and the hours would slip by without notice. When Sam and I were married I played the piano whenever I got home from work before he did. I played when the children were little and then played even more when they were in school. Really, my father would be surprised. I was a pretty good pianist for a housewife. It really was when my mother moved in with us that I stopped playing because I couldn’t imagine playing in front of her and there never seemed to be a time when I was in the house alone anymore. It wasn’t my passion, but it was a comfort. I have to say I missed it. I baked a lot more cakes now that I wasn’t playing.
“What about you, Camille?” My father pointed toward her by turning his entire arm in her direction like the metal needle of a compass.
“Pass.”
“I’ve been trying to give her lessons for years but she just won’t stand for it,” my mother said.
“Maybe the piano isn’t your instrument,” Sam offered. “It isn’t the piano for everyone.”
“I think the guitar would be kind of cool.” Camille’s voice was small and I immediately understood she was saying something that she actually wanted to do. If Camille wanted to play the guitar, I would get her guitar lessons tomorrow.
“You need to start an instrument early,” my father said. “You should have taken up the guitar ten years ago.”
Camille’s head dipped ever so slightly and she nodded. I could not understand it for the life of me. My father adored Camille. It made no sense at all that he was undermining her this way.
“Let me understand this,” my mother began slowly. “Sam here, who—forgive me, Sam—has very likely passed the middle point of his life, is free to start down any path he chooses, is encouraged by you to start medical school so that he could be a doctor just in time to draw Social Security, while our Camille, an ancient junior in high school, is too old to take up the guitar. For heaven’s sake, Guy, at least be consistent. Madonna was forty-two when she started playing the guitar.”
Camille bloomed, smiling so wide we were treated to a rare glimpse of every one of her perfect white teeth. “That’s right!” she said. My mother could not have made more of a celebration out of the moment if she’d uncorked a case of champagne. Who would have thought she was a denizen of popular culture?
My father sighed. “So corrected,” he said. He bent back his head in such a way that made me think he would have rubbed his neck had he had the hands with which to do so. “I think the medication is making me fuzzy. I’m sorry. Please don’t hold me accountable, Camille.”
“I don’t,” she said kindly, and patted his good shoulder.
“I think I’ve gone too far. I think I should finish my delicious cake and go to bed.”
Camille took her cue and forked another, larger bite of cake into
his mouth. I got up and gave him his pills, dropped them on his waiting tongue, and then waited while he washed them down with milk pulled up through his straw.
“I’ll get you to bed.” Sam pushed back from the table.
My mother shook her head. “I’ll take him in,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
My father swallowed hard. “Will you brush my teeth?” He wasn’t being funny. “I need to brush them after all this cake.”
“I’ll even floss them,” she said.
“I never floss. I hate to floss.”
My mother smiled with some real and secret pleasure. “Tonight,” she said, and tapped the table to mark the exact moment in time, “you will begin to floss.”
“Don’t forget to put on the antibiotic cream,” I reminded her.
“I know,” she said, shaking me off. “I know.”
Good-nights were said and departures were made. I had no early memories of my parents walking in the same direction. Once they were gone, my husband and daughter and I sat at the table and looked at each other like members of an over-informed jury.
“This is what it was like when you were growing up?” Camille said.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t like this at all.”
“They were nice to each other then?” Camille leaned forward. This was going to be her bedtime story.
“They were divorced when I was so little I don’t even remember them being together. My dad would show up every now and then and they would argue, but most of the time, no, it was pretty quiet.” I looked over my shoulder, down the hall to the closed door of Wyatt’s room. “Maybe if they had fought more then, they could have worked it out of their systems.”
“Or they would have killed each other,” Sam said. “One way or the other there would have been more resolution.”
“Promise me that you two won’t ever get divorced,” Camille said, her voice low and serious. “I don’t think I could stand this.”
I looked at Sam. I knew it was an easy question, like when Camille was six and asked us to promise her that there was nothing under the bed that planned to eat her up after she fell asleep, but suddenly it occurred to me, these were hard times, really hard times with lots of changes, and that our marriage was something we needed to be very careful with.
