by May Sarton
“They tell me wicker furniture is coming back. So after forty years we are in fashion!”
And they talked on about nothing, like skaters on a thinly iced-over pond. Anna was good at drawing Mrs. Fraser out, about the garden, Beulah (“she appears to be suffering from permanent menopause”), how Joe was working out. Ned, nursing his Scotch, was silent, and watched Anna’s tactful treatment of his mother with a certain amusement. At times she could act the perfect lady with consummate skill, and he enjoyed watching her do it. As for his mother, she looked suddenly old, her face had become very wrinkled he noted, yet old age suited her. It was more tolerable to see her at seventy spending her life complaining than it had been when she was younger.
And out of these thoughts Ned asked, “Who do you see these days, Mama? How is Ernesta?”
“Oh, she’s too busy to come and see me … she is on every imaginable committee and spends two days a week at the children’s hospital. I’m lucky if she stops in once a month. Anne has cancer and refuses to see any of her old friends, at least refuses to see me. I seem to be some sort of leper. Sophia is a nervous wreck and ought to be in McLean.”
Ned laughed, “Spare us the lugubrious list! Isn’t anyone well and happy?”
“When you get to be my age, Ned, you’ll understand. Old age itself is a kind of illness, you see.” Pauline Fraser was sitting very erect and perhaps (at least Anna thought so) enjoying all this misery. It was her element.
“It’s funny,” Anna said, “but I have always looked forward to being old. I have known so many great old people—my teacher, Madama Protopova, is one. She is nearly eighty I believe, but she is still so vitally engaged in her life in and with music, still so fierce and demanding she acts like an electric current on her pupils. Old age can be a great time … I mean …”
“Well, if you have a career of course it’s quite different,” Pauline said, not pleased by the turn the conversation was taking. Why was it that Anna always managed to make her feel lacking in some way? “But if your life was cut in two when you were young, old age would only emphasize the loss.”
Luckily Maria now made her appearance at the door. And they went into the dining room, an extremely formal room, daunting, Anna always felt, as though conversation died at its entrance.
“Oh, those roses!” she exclaimed as she unfolded her damask napkin. “Roses and silver, I had not thought of them as setting each other off, but they do! It’s beautiful!”
“Mama is a genius at arranging flowers,” Ned said, smiling across at his mother for the first time.
“Am I?” Pauline blushed with pleasure. “I’ve always enjoyed doing it.”
Ned really should be kinder to his mother, Anna was thinking. It took so little, a compliment … why couldn’t he do it more often?
“This soup is heaven,” she said. “What is it? Cucumber?”
“I think so—it’s a secret of Beulah’s.” Pauline was beginning to thaw. She felt less nervous, and so she turned to Anna and asked, “How do you two manage? About cooking, I mean?”
“Oh, we take turns … and then Felicia comes in every other day and makes a casserole and dessert.”
“You have not made a cook out of Ned, have you?”
“Would that be a disaster?”
“No, a triumph, my dear!” Pauline Fraser was suffused with laughter. “When he was a boy he tried to make brownies and burned them. Another time, popovers that refused to rise—do you remember?” she asked Ned.
“Of course I remember. But you forget, Mama, that Paul and I lived in the little house for a summer, and we used to cook things.”
Pauline finished her soup and the next course was served as she spoke in her forlorn voice, the voice that infuriated Ned. “I had a lot to bear that summer. Paul, you know,” she said to Anna, “tried to commit suicide.”
“That must have been awfully hard for you,” Anna murmured.
“Yes, it was. Paul recovered. He had the help of a psychiatrist He had someone to lean on. I had nobody and I never recovered.”
“Must we dwell on the past, Mama? You are giving us a lovely meal. Let’s enjoy it,” Ned said coldly.
“Ned has no compassion,” Pauline said to Anna. “You must have found that out by now.”
“He can’t show it,” Anna said in the intimacy of the moment, not looking at her husband. She knew that he would have his closed, cold look and she preferred not to see it.
“How do you know someone feels anything if they can’t show it?” Pauline warmed to her daughter-in-law.
“I expect your husband was a very compassionate man?” Anna asked.
“Was he, Ned?”
“Was he?” Ned asked himself. “He was marvelous with any wounded animal. That I do remember.”
“Poor Toby,” Pauline said.
“We had a dog who died of cancer,” Ned explained. “Father nursed him, stayed up night after night with him.” A thing, he also remembered, but did not say, was that it had irritated his mother. She felt the dog should have been put to sleep for mercy’s sake and also because she didn’t like Angus to sleep downstairs.
“Long, long ago,” Pauline sighed. “Isn’t memory a strange thing? A little thing makes an indelible impression. And then there are whole areas in the past that just disappear.”
Anna was thinking what strange people these were … how close they came to coming out with things and then withdrew, as Ned now did. “All this is boring for Anna,” he said.
“Not at all. I am fascinated. Do go on about your father.”
“Ned never talks about his father,” Pauline said. “Does anyone want a second helping? No? Well then, you may clear the table and bring in dessert, Maria.”
Perhaps to change the subject, perhaps out of sheer curiosity, perhaps to stir things up, Pauline, using her new confidential tone with Anna, leaned toward her and whispered, “I’m always hoping for some good news.”
“What’s that, Mother?” Ned’s voice was sharp. “To what good news are you referring?”
“I give you three guesses,” she said, smiling across at her son.
“I’ll give you good news. Anna had a triumph in Pittsburgh last week.”
“You know that isn’t what I meant! Though I am very glad to hear it, of course.”
But this playing around, cat and mouse, did not appeal to Anna. “Your mother hopes to hear I am pregnant, Ned.”
“You see, she knows.” Pauline dove into her lemon meringue pie with enthusiasm. “Well?”
“Beulah is a genius,” Ned said, after a mouthful.
Anna waited for help, but when none was forthcoming and Ned did not glance her way, she decided to speak out for once, for once come out as her real self. “I’m afraid you will be disappointed, Mrs. Fraser. Perhaps you should know that we do not intend to have children. I am thirty-six.”
“That’s not too late these days.”
“Let it be, Mama,” Ned was clearly upset, upset and angry.
“Well, it doesn’t seem strange to hope—I don’t have a grandson.”
“Oh, you are interested for purely selfish reasons.”
“Selfish? You seem to me rather selfish. You are well off and brilliant, I am told. Anna is talented. It seems to me that you have an obligation not to decide against life.”
“You sound like the Moral Majority, Mama.” Ned was ice cold, Pauline was flushed. Anna, between them felt excruciatingly uncomfortable.
“Not at all. I am all for abortions for the poor, for some poor girl who gets pregnant by mistake and has no means to support a child. The rich, on the other hand, have a certain responsibility, it seems to me. But I know I am old-fashioned,” she added in a gentler tone. “A dodo who still believes in family life.”
Anna was so afraid that Ned would attack his mother, who had not created anything like what is normally thought of as “family life” for Paul and him, that she plunged in recklessly, cutting him off as he said “Mama!” in a furious tone.
; “It’s my fault, Mrs. Fraser. I do not believe that I can serve my gift as it must be served and bring up a child.” It sounded so pompous that Anna cringed as she heard herself saying it. How could one say such a thing? How could it ring true? And to be compelled to make such a statement offended her deeply. Once again she was being forced out of what such people considered normal into some wild fantasy that seemed to them outlandish if not actually criminal.
“Well, in that case …”
“Mama,” Ned realized that Anna was in a difficult position. “Mama,” he said again to get her attention. “When I was a bachelor I was constantly under attack … you needled me, didn’t you? You said almost the same things then, that with all my advantages, etc. I had an obligation to marry. Isn’t it time that we all accepted that there is not only one way to the good life and that family life is not the be-all and end-all of human endeavor?” And astonishing himself, he reached across the table to clasp Anna’s ice-cold hand for a moment.
“Most people would agree with your mother,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem strange,” Mrs. Fraser said, “to wish to see the world populated with intelligent people! There are enough underprivileged arriving every day to add to our taxes and live lives of penury.” She said it with such complacency that it was followed by silence.
“Well, let’s have our coffee on the porch,” she signalled Maria and they got up, but even settled in the sunny informal room, the mood was now not to be broken.
“You are evading the issue, Mama, with all that talk of populating the world with an elite, a frightfully snobbish point of view. I won’t argue. That is not the issue.”
“But if the issue is not that, what is it?” Pauline Fraser asked with extreme politeness. It seemed to her quite unforgivable to have been attacked in this way.
“The issue,” Anna said coldly, “is art, Mrs. Fraser. Maybe it’s easier for men … most male singers are married and their wives bring up families, but for a woman it’s much harder. Can’t you see? I am on the road much of the time, and when I am not, I work hard rehearsing.”
“But surely you are depriving yourself … and Ned.” Mrs. Fraser would not have admitted it, but she was enjoying what she thought of as a battle of wits. Two against one at that, but she was holding her own.
“Maybe I am. But Ned knew who I was when he married me.”
“I fell in love with a singer, Mama, not with a cow!” At this he laughed and exchanged a glance with Anna, but she could not respond to his laughter. She felt too vulnerable, too exposed.
“It’s all beyond me, I’m afraid …” Pauline Fraser felt tired. After all, how could she win? “I always thought artists were first of all great human beings,” she murmured.
“And it is necessary for a woman to bear children to be a great human being?” Ned was relentless.
“It seems unnatural not to …”
“The fact is,” Anna’s voice rose, “that one pays a high price for even a small talent—and that is what no one understands. Oh, if I could only make it clear …” Anna was close to tears now. After all, perhaps she was depriving Ned. “We do what we can Mrs. Fraser. I don’t know whether I shall ever really make it to the top … But that’s the risk, and if I say so myself, it is not ignoble to be willing to risk so much!” she said passionately, too passionately.
“You are a very powerful woman, Anna! You are so sure of yourself, of a destiny I suppose. It is hard for an ordinary old woman to understand you.” The false tone jarred.
“Sure of myself?” Anna was shaking now, with anger or pain it was hard to tell. “Don’t you know I am a mass of self-doubt? That I have to face it and get over it every day?”
“Please don’t shout. I’m not deaf.” Maria was standing in the doorway with the coffee tray and hesitated to come in. “Come in, Maria. Cream? Sugar?” Pauline asked Anna.
“Black, please.” The coffee was poured and passed by Maria and while she was in the room, the amenities were preserved. When she had left, Anna said coldly, “I’m sorry to be such a disappointment.” Why had she even tried to explain? Why had she let herself get angry?
Ned had refused coffee and taken refuge in the kitchen where he was congratulating Beulah on her dinner. Sitting at the kitchen table with Pedro and about to eat, she was not responsive. “I do the best I can, Master Ned, but my legs ache after standing at the stove so long. I can’t go on forever.”
“No, I expect not. How long have you been with us?”
“Forty years. Believe it or not.” Then she smiled a slow smile. “I can remember you when you were in diapers.”
“Imagine that,” said Pedro, giving Ned a wink. “Come on, Maria, your chops are getting cold!”
“I must go back to the gloom and doom,” Ned said.
“She gets worse … but you should come more often, Master Ned. Perks her up. I could hear you arguing at the table. That’s all right. She needs someone to tell her off once in a while.” Beulah frowned, “It’s loneliness …”
“Yes. Well, we’re all lonely when it comes to that!”
“It’s a long haul, that’s all.” And Beulah, anxious to eat in peace, dismissed him with that.
“Where have you been, Ned?” Mrs. Fraser asked plaintively. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”
“Just talking to Beulah for a minute.”
“I hope she’s over her cross mood. She’s quite impossible these days.”
“Her legs ache, Mama.”
“They always have,” said Pauline Fraser.
Ned chuckled. “You two … it’s like a crotchety marriage. I wonder why it’s lasted forty years.”
“She’s loyal, and so am I,” Pauline said, with a lift of her chin. “Besides, I couldn’t do without her.”
“Well, if you’ve finished your coffee, Anna, we’d better get going. I’ll see if I can find Fonzi …” and he walked down to the garden, whistling. Fonzi was fast asleep under a rose bush, but leapt up, delighted to be noticed at last.
Anna and Pauline Fraser stood in the doorway watching them play together, Fonzi chasing a stick, Ned throwing it again and again.
“He’s just like his father. All that feeling about a dog!”
But Anna was not going to give at this point.
“Goodbye, Anna. I hope you have success in Dallas.”
At last, Anna felt as she ran down to join Ned and Fonzi, we are out of the cage.
They walked down the path, pausing at the gate to wave. Mrs. Fraser was still standing in the doorway and waved back without smiling. They have each other, she thought, and I have no one. But I’ll never understand why Ned married her. She’s so intense! So self-absorbed!
“Why do I do it, Ned?” Anna asked when they had got back and were packing up to go back to the city. They were standing in the kitchen, Anna unrolling plastic to wrap the remains of the roast in, Ned emptying the frigidaire of milk and orange juice.
“What do you do? Mother is simply an impossible woman!”
“No … why do I shout and scream, why do I have to be so on the defensive?”
“Well, thank God you didn’t scream!” Ned teased.
“I’m so uncomfortable on a social occasion.… It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
For some reason, perhaps that he resented his mother so much, Anna was not on the defensive now with Ned. She felt that for once he was on her side. How strange, how out of the ordinary that was!
“Well, in this case we were both attacked. I was just as angry as you were.”
“Were you? Were you really?”
“It’s none of her damned business whether we have children or not!”
“No …” Anna set the roast in the basket, took a couple of closed containers from Ned and set them in it. Then she burst into tears. Standing there at the counter, she began to weep uncontrollably.
“What’s all this about?” Ned said, handing her a Kleenex. But she was unable to speak. Her tears had now turned to painful sobs. “I feel like a
m-m-monster,” she sobbed. “It’s true what your mother said … I’m selfish and …”
“Should be shot at dawn,” Ned used her own phrase to make her see how silly she was being. “Anna, you simply must not let mother do this to you!”
Anna blew her nose. “It’s not your mother … I mean, maybe she is right … oh, Ned!” She turned to him and saw him through a blur of tears, and for a second leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. But Ned did not, could not hold her in his arms. Anna’s tears froze him. “It’s so lonely,” she said, “I feel like an orphan.”
“You’re not an orphan, so why make up this fantasy that you are one? I simply cannot understand you, Anna.” He took the basket and went out to the garage with it. What a mess of a day it had turned into! It was always a mistake to go to his mother’s and today had turned into a disaster. What did Anna mean about an “orphan”? Or was she in her crazy way feeling that a woman with no child was an orphan? A ludicrous concept at best. Women were such biological constructs … everything appeared to come from and go back to the womb. But he had imagined that Anna was powerful enough not to allow herself this sort of indulgence. She did not want a child. Why not have the guts to stand by that fact without an orgy of self-pity?
When he went back into the house Anna was upstairs closing the suitcases, as she called down to tell him. So he went up, and without a word took the cases out. Anna, he noted with relief, had stopped crying.
In the last few minutes she had reached a cold clarity at the center of confusion: I simply have to work now and forget everything else. Even Ned.
And in the car with Fonzi asleep between them she touched Ned’s arm gently and said, “It was nice when you played for me last night, and I sang … darling, thank you.”
“It was very enjoyable,” Ned answered. “We should do it more often. I’m going to have the piano tuned while you’re away.”
“Greater love hath no man,” she teased, and as spontaneously as she had wept a half an hour ago, she laughed her loud delightful laugh.
How could one believe she was not acting all the time if she could seem to be in despair one moment and the next burst into such carefree laughter?
