Gladys Reunited

by Sandi Toksvig

  While we’re on the subject, there are quite a lot of words in American advertising whose meaning eludes me. Richard showed Rita a doll he had bought. It was battery-operated and danced the hula-hula while holding a microphone. If that were not enough it was also proud to boast that it had Non Fallaction. Everyone we encountered had a different pronunciation for this word, some being more sexual than others. It was only when we allowed the doll, Gigi, to hula that we discovered what it means. As she glides across a table top she reaches the edge of the surface and turns away. She does not fall off. She has, as advertised, Non Fallaction.

  I am fascinated by the difference between American and English humour. On his show, Michael Parkinson once asked the American comic Steve Martin what the difference was. Martin took a pair of scissors out of his pocket and said, ‘Well, Americans would find this funny,’ and cut Parkinson’s tie off. The English studio audience fell about with laughter and Martin looked at them quizzically.

  ‘Gee,’ he said. ‘They find that funny too. Well, I don’t know what the difference is.’

  Richard and I both thought the Non Fallaction doll was funny and I was pleased that Rita did too. Feeling emboldened that we were on the same comedy wavelength, I went on to show her a device that I had found promoted in the Delta Airlines Sky Mall Catalog. It was an invaluable item which tests the ‘doneness’ of your cooking. The word made me laugh. Rita wrinkled her brow at me as if I were foolish.

  ‘Why is that funny?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t think there is such a word,’ I said rather feebly ‘Doneness.’

  ‘Doneness,’ she explained patiently, ‘means whether something is done or not.’

  That’s right and it’s not funny.

  Rita’s train was due and Richard was off out again. I realised I faced more time alone in the apartment. I pursued my friendship with the waiter.

  ‘Do you know where the nearest bookshop is?’

  The question clearly introduced a new concept. He looked blank.

  ‘A bookstore,’ prompted Rita helpfully. ‘A store that sells books.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Right,’ he said finally. ‘I think there is a newsstand downstairs that might have a book.’

  We set out for New Rochelle where being come we had good Entertainment and Recruited ourselves very well. This is a very pretty place well compact and good handsome houses, clean, good passable roads, and situated on a Navigable River, abundance of land well fined and cleared all along we passed, which caused me a Love of the place, which I could have been content to live in it.

  Madam Sarah Kimble Knight’s Journal — travelling by horse from Boston to New York, 1704

  Rita and her family live in New Rochelle, a small town neighbour to my old home town of Mamaroneck in the county of Westchester. What can I tell you about it? It has a little fame — the first US Post Office was established here, George Washington stopped by on his way to assume command of the army and the cartoon Mighty Mouse came to life here. It’s not much but then it’s not an earth-shattering kind of place. It is one of the archetypal suburbs of America, the place where all English people believe all Americans dwell.

  Rita’s family live in what her husband Ron calls a ‘homogenous community’. That means mostly families and mostly white. It could be the neighbourhood of my childhood. The kids play ball outside in the street while the American flag flutters over many a doorway. They have a neat timber-frame house standing on a corner plot on a quiet street. Rita and Ron have two sons, David who is fifteen and Paul who is thirteen, and a daughter Julie, who is nine. Julie lives in a very girly bedroom and the boys share a room with bunk beds. Everything looks about as ‘normal’ as you could expect from American married life.

  It was Thanksgiving and Rita had invited Richard and me to join the family for the traditional dinner. Despite the joys of Grand Central with its great trains and fabulous dog bones, Richard and I decided to drive out in ‘the rental’. That’s what you say in New York. You ‘take a drive in the rental’.

  You don’t need to say the word car at all.

  Richard won’t drive abroad (see story with horse and have sympathy) so I piloted. Out through the Bronx, across the Triborough Bridge following the signs for New England Upstate. A place as far from anything to do with England as one can possibly imagine. We did buy a map but there was no need. The forty-minute trip out to the suburbs was etched in some forgotten part of my brain.

  The dinner we were heading for is one of the biggest events in the American calendar. When you list American things Thanksgiving and apple pie are right up there with the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi. In the scheme of American history the event is ancient as it goes back some 480 years. This makes it a few years younger than my sitting room at home in England.

  Samoset, the Native American credited with getting the pilgrims through the winter so that they could invent Thanksgiving and give the card industry a boost before Christmas, is said to have greeted the settlers by crying in English, ‘Much welcome, Englishmen! Much welcome, Englishmen!’

  There are none left now of course, the tribal peoples having made the mistake of settling on such prime stockbroker belt real estate in the first place. I don’t think anyone remembers Samoset these days. Now Thanksgiving is a time of gigantic football games, family get-togethers and turkey Probably even more than Christmas it is a time when Americans travel long distances to be together. There are cardboard and real pumpkins everywhere, greeting the nearest and dearest. It is an honour to be included. Richard and I drove past endless place names which in America, in particular, hold some kind of key to its quilted history. Places like the Bronx, named after the first recorded white settler in the region who just happened to be a Dane like me.

  We took some wine with us. It was, after all, the first gift of the Europeans. That, and things which needed to wait for penicillin to provide a cure. The Native American languages, which were rich and expressive, had no word for drunkenness. I don’t know if I would have liked the early meals. One settler writes of going to visit a chief Where supper was prepared by ‘killing a fat dog and skinning it with great haste, with shells which they had got out of the water’.

  Clearly, boy scout badges all round for ingenuity if not pet care. Richard and I were hoping for something a little more civilised. Every Friday night the Gladyses used to get together for spaghetti and coffee ice-cream. I expected Thanksgiving would be a touch more elaborate.

  Rita’s husband, Ron, is a fairly big man with a full salt and pepper beard. He is also funny. He started telling jokes as soon as we got there. Some of them were good: they were even funny the second time around.

  Ron was, as he says, ‘raised Jewish’, while Rita was brought up Catholic. When they fell in love not everyone was delighted although Rita’s parents coped.

  ‘My mother would have preferred an Italian Catholic but she was happy with Ron as long as we got married. Now it’s great. My mother thinks he’s wonderful and his mother thinks I’m wonderful.’

  ‘She calls me John or Don a lot,’ muttered Ron and then smiled. ‘Hey, Richard, did I tell you the one about…’

  The boys wandered off to be funny while Rita got me a drink in her kitchen with its over-large American appliances. She was sixteen when we first met. Now she has a son nearly that age and my oldest daughter has just become a teenager.

  ‘Is this what you imagined?’ I asked her.

  ‘Not at all.’ Rita shook her head and looked straight at me. ‘I am so glad no one told me when I was sixteen that this is where I was going to be.’

  She spoke of wanting to be an actress, of leading a glamorous life and of her determination never to marry and have children. We would have talked more but the children wanted drinks, sustenance, help with maths homework and all the other essentials of juvenile life. Julie asked me if I would like to learn some ‘New York things’. I thought I probably would.

  The New York State beverage is milk
, the New York State fruit is apple, the New York State flower is the rose…’

  She has clearly not been wasting her time at school. Julie took me through all the many New York State official things. I stopped listening after learning that the New York State animal is the beaver. There are certain things in life that hit my Achilles’ heel of comedy and for no reason at all the beaver is one of them. She continued as I drifted off, wondering who makes these decisions about official matters of state and how you get to do that for a living. Julie is in the fourth grade, which is what I joined when I first came to the United States. I asked her if she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. All right, it was a dull adult question but I had gone into something of a state coma.

  ‘I really want to help endangered animals, ‘she said. I know that I had no such global ambitions at nine.

  ‘I don’t think we had those in my day,’ I said, rather lamely, and left to get another drink.

  When I went back into the kitchen I realised that we had been there for some time and there seemed to be no cooking preparations whatsoever going on. Thanksgiving dinner is the full roast turkey affair served up by a devoted mother, so this was a little strange. Certainly it was very un-Martha Stewart. Where was the bird, where were the potatoes and yams, where, at the very least, was the tomato cobbler?

  ‘My mom’s bringing dinner,’ Rita explained.

  ‘Your mom is coming for dinner?’ I asked.

  Rita shook her head. ‘No. She’s just bringing it. I was busy so she made dinner.’

  Ron slapped the counter. ‘Nature abhors a vacuum, well, nature, get in line. Rita does not want to do housework. I tell you, what we both need is…’

  ‘… a wife!’ they concluded together as Rita’s father Angelo appeared in the driveway with a complete roast turkey and all the trimmings. He had driven from his house which is practically round the corner. A sprightly older man with a lived-in face and a bulbous nose he might have borrowed from a retired boxer. At least, I thought, Rita and Ron have his wife. Everything went in the oven to stay warm. I couldn’t understand Rita’s mother cooking and not eating so I asked if we could at least go over and say thank you.

  Rita drove Richard and me over. The house was just as neat as I remembered. We entered the trim cul-de-sac and I saw that in thirty years very little had changed. I was fairly sure if we went into Rita’s bedroom it would still have a single bed with a lace canopy. I asked her what her parents had thought back in the days when their daughter wanted to be a stand-up in Manhattan.

  ‘It wasn’t what my mom had envisioned for me — the bartending really got to her.’

  ‘You loved stand-up. How come you didn’t stick with it?’

  Rita thought for a minute. She thinks carefully about everything she says. Gives it all weight.

  ‘I had some … psychological difficulties … sometimes just getting through the day was the biggest challenge. For a long time I was deathly afraid to go in front of an audience. I had my mid-life crisis very early. The whole thing overwhelmed me very much. Joyce (Gladys Nine) asked me to do a reading at her wedding and I couldn’t do it.’

  This seemed extraordinary. This was a woman I remembered as desperate to read at anybody’s wedding.

  ‘What the hell was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Fear of success? Maybe.’

  And I liked that answer. It was an answer strangely packed with confidence while also accepting defeat. Just as no English person will ever tell you whether they are actually good at something or not, so no English person would ever give such a reply.

  ‘I perform now,’ she continued. ‘I teach computer software and that is a kind of performing. It doesn’t have to be but that is the way I do it.’

  Her mother opened the screen door to her house. I remembered her as a petite Italian woman with glasses and hair set once a week by someone else. Now I saw a slightly older, petite Italian woman with glasses and hair set once a week by someone else.

  ‘Sandra, how nice to see you.’ Sandra? I was tempted to look over my shoulder and see if someone else had turned up.

  ‘Enter ye who have faith!’ called Rita’s father, from the comfort of his armchair. We went into the sitting room. It was rather plain and dominated by a television in an elaborate wooden cabinet. It had looked like this thirty years ago except for two things. The large framed portrait of Rita, which had always been the only decoration, had been replaced by a large framed portrait of Julie, Rita’s daughter. And the room was now cerise. Deep cerise. A cerise which I was unaware you could buy as wall paint. Her dad never got up but held court from his chair. It reminded me of so many sitting rooms when I was a kid and the father of the household held power, for he and he alone had the remote control to the television.

  Rita’s mother is now seventy-seven; She told me she was seventy-seven. She told me a great deal for she is happy to talk. She too seemed to remember all about the Gladyses.

  ‘They used to rehearse right here, in this room.’

  ‘They practically got started in this house,’ said her father.

  ‘Why the Gladyses, they were practically invented in here,’ agreed his wife. She looked at me. ‘I can still see you at the table eating — cabbage and beans. That’s what Angelo said it was, cabbage and beans.’

  ‘It was,’ said Angelo, so we all agreed.

  This put Rita’s mom in mind of food and she whisked Richard off to the kitchen. Here she had large containers of cabbage and beans to show him.

  ‘I made it yesterday. I hope it’s okay. Cabbage can be funny.’ She poked at the funny cabbage and said, ‘She’s just the same … a little heavier, but don’t tell her I said that. Rita adores her. You should eat this with Arthur Avenue bread from the Bronx. You heard of Arthur Avenue?’

  Richard shook his head. Clearly he was at fault.

  ‘It’s famous,’ admonished the chef. ‘The next time you come we’ll have Arthur Avenue.’

  Mother and Richard returned to the sitting room. He was carrying a giant Tupperware container of cabbage and beans for us to take home.

  ‘We love your sitcoms,’ said Father, making conversation. ‘Keeping Up Appearances and As Time Goes By.’

  Mother nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s wonderful. Our sitcoms are nothing like yours. Yours are much better.’ This was clearly a pet subject for the couple.

  ‘The turns are so great. The comebacks from one person to another.’

  It was not an opinion I think I had ever heard expressed before. Generally the British world of comedy is made to feel deeply inferior to the land of Friends, Cheers and Frasier. We all agreed that if Judi Dench or Patricia Routledge ever wanted cabbage and beans I would tell them where to call.

  ‘Patricia Routledge — she is very talented.’

  Mother headed back for the memory trail. ‘I can remember the day Sandra left New York — everyone was teary eyed. That’s the last time I saw her. The day before she left for England … twenty-nine, nearly thirty years … it’s almost a lifetime. Rita, you remember, Aunt Caroline’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? Even Aunt La La remembered her.’

  I looked at Richard and had a strong feeling that I was going to hate this story.

  ‘Aunt La La was supposed to be watching you and you got drunk. Aunt La La said so the other day.’

  Drunk? I recall one glass of wine only but we all laughed anyway. Rita’s parents had many videos of Rita’s brood performing. We all sat and watched the kids on video. I found myself saying, ‘The kids are so cute.’ It’s an expression I never use.

  ‘Aren’t they?’ agreed Rita’s mum.

  Then we watched Rita and Ron performing for their church at some event singing Cole Porter’s ‘You’re the Top’.

  ‘They’ve been good friends.’

  I didn’t know if her mother meant Rita and Ron or Rita and me. As we drove away Rita was reflective.

  ‘It was a different time when we were growing up. No one ate out on the spur of the moment
. Even going for pizza had to be planned. Everything is faster now, everyone has other people doing things for them. Lot of things which would have been unthinkable when I was growing up. We now have someone to cut the lawn.’

  Having someone to cut your lawn. I suppose that is a sign of growing up.

  Back at home the kids were setting the table for the big meal. Richard was obsessed with the cranberry jelly which sat on a glass plate still carrying the shape and indentations of the tin can it had come out of. He kept poking it as if it might come back to life. Everyone was given a formal place with Richard and Ron, as the grown males, each taking one end of the table. It is well known that women lack the testosterone to survive eating without physical support on either side.

  The meal warmed in the oven while we ate our starter. Everything looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. Rockwell was the quintessential American artist who, in the first half of the twentieth century, captured many a scene of Americana. He made all American life look like a James Stewart movie. I had told Richard about him. What I hadn’t told Richard was that Rita and Ron are not without their religious side. I think I particularly enjoyed watching my friend nearly sink under the table when asked to hold hands with everyone and take turns to say what he was grateful for. Richard is English and does not want to be grateful to anyone.

  Rita and Ron’s kids are as chatty as every American child is born to be and I think the conversation would have made Mr Rockwell’s hand freeze over his palette. Perhaps they were trying to put Richard back at ease but they talked about high school where they have both a ‘Tolerance’ club and an ‘Aids Awareness’ club. This seemed extraordinary to me when the raciest thing I could recall was a French conversation club. I tried to imagine who would spend their teenage years being an active member of Aids awareness. What would you do each week? How would you have outings? Actually even the word ‘outings’ would take on a different meaning. I thought it was commendable but very forward indeed.