Suzanne Davis gets a life

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  Granted, it took her a while to get the hang of things. At first, she didn’t understand the joke when Flanagan said he was dying for a cigarette. My mother’s capacity for irony, let alone black humor, is limited.

  “I don’t think he should smoke,” she said. “He has lung cancer.”

  “It’s a joke, Mom,” I explained.

  “I don’t see how you can joke about something like that,” she noted, looking sternly around at the group of us, including Flanagan.

  “Lighten up, lady,” said Flanagan. “Who’s dying around here, anyway?”

  This produced another round of laughter that my mother seemed to find confusing, but as Flanagan was the one with lung cancer and seemed to find it funny, she tried her best to join in.

  She also was nonplussed by Mr. Dryer.

  “Is he simple?” she asked me. “Why is he always standing around, doing whatever she says? I know she’s sick, but still …”

  “He loves her, Mom,” I explained.

  I saw her pondering this. I don’t know that she had ever thought about love that way—as quiet, unprotesting service.

  In the case of Ellen Pontillo, however, my mother seemed able to grasp the situation, and she forged ahead with characteristic determination. That Ellen had terminal cancer did not faze her; I don’t believe that she thought anyone would have the temerity to die in her vicinity—and I’m sure that Ellen, though she would die, would not do so with my mother around. To make sure that this wouldn’t happen, my mother’s attention was relentless. She gave Ellen the scented candles and the relaxation tapes that I hadn’t wanted, and she also bought her a pair of silk lounging pajamas, an assortment of educational games for her kids (geared to three grades above their age level), and a special pillow to ease any lower back pain that Tom Pontillo might at some future date happen to develop. Her supply of useless gifts was never-ending, and it was a credit to Ellen’s good nature that she took what to me would have been annoying meddling as simple concern and helpfulness. Or perhaps, to be fair, Ellen appreciated the attention and actually liked the lounging pajamas.

  My mother also got along surprisingly well with Mary Lou and Aidah, to whom she was continually giving advice about their love lives. “At least make him vacuum,” she told Aidah about the deadbeat on her couch. “Either he’ll leave because he won’t want to do it, or you’ll at least save money on a housekeeper.”

  She even made a special undercover visit to the hospital downtown where Desmond, Mary Lou’s male nurse, worked on the trauma floor. She had, with the help of certain hospital personnel whom she had bullied into service, assumed a false identity as the aunt of one of the comatose patients there. After sitting for an hour at said patient’s bedside and watching Desmond at work, she returned to report that he was everything one would want in a solicitous nurse—and also very cute and mannerly, and that Mary Lou should immediately leave the abusive nonalcoholic she was currently with in favor of this more gentlemanly and caring specimen. “You don’t have much of a window, though,” she counseled. “He’s a nice-looking young man surrounded by women all day long. If you don’t move quickly, he’s going to be snapped up.”

  It was always my mother’s view that men would be “snapped up.” And she was usually right. Men with even a semblance of normality and congeniality did tend to be snapped up. As with shopping for well-priced apartments and sale shoes in the popular sizes, you had to make your decision quickly and move on it, or you’d end up empty-handed.

  Here I should add that Aidah, who my mother had suggested might rouse her deadbeat male consort by getting him to vacuum, was herself no shrinking violet where advice was concerned. One day, after my mother had been rattling on to me in her usual style, making such observations as: I ought to get my underarms waxed since my razor left unsightly stubble, my skirt was too short given that I had the Davis knees, and I shouldn’t wear green, especially on a chemo day, Aidah, who was connecting my IV, looked down and said, “Can’t you give it a rest, woman? Your daughter don’t need you to be criticizing her every minute of every day.”

  “Excuse me,” said my mother, “was I talking to you?”

  “No, madam, you were not. But I feel obliged, in all honesty, to say something. You ought to be making this girl of yours feel better, not worse. The treatments she come for are bad enough; she don’t need to have you adding to them.”

  This, believe it or not, actually seemed to hit home. My mother put her hand to her heart. “Suzanne, did you hear what this woman said? Do I make you feel worse?”

  Was this a rhetorical question? It went without saying that she made me feel worse; why else had I spent half my life trying to get away from her? But she had never asked me the question directly before, and that in itself seemed to me to represent a step in the right direction. So I tried to be diplomatic. “Mom,” I said, “I know you mean well, but I don’t need you to give me advice on everything I do. Especially right now, when I’m trying to keep a positive attitude.”

  She was actually quiet for the rest of the afternoon, a feat in itself, and from then on, her intrusions tapered off. They didn’t stop, of course, but I could sometimes see her bite her lip as I left the apartment without the lipstick she’d picked up for me in a color she thought would brighten my complexion. She was definitely making progress, and I can thank my pretty good cancer for that.

  I CONTINUED IN book club through my chemotherapy, mostly because Pauline made sure to accommodate my schedule, holding meetings when I felt “up to it,” as she said, and canceling when I didn’t. This seemed more than my due; I wasn’t used to a whole group of people rearranging their schedules on my account. But Dr. Chitturi explained that sometimes people don’t mind going out of their way and that, instead of fighting such acts of goodwill, I ought to acquiesce and be happy that my friends valued my presence so much. “Maybe they genuinely like you and want to have you there.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “They just want to score ‘nice’ points.”

  “But there are many ways to score those points,” she said in her liltingly reasonable way. “If they didn’t like you, they could just bake you a cake or send you a card. They must like to have you around or they would not rearrange their busy schedules to make this happen.”

  I thought a bit about what she said and decided there might be something to it. I wasn’t that interesting a person, but I could be funny, and given that book club discussion was often dominated by the insufferable Bathsheba, it might be that people wanted me there to cut the effect as well as to score the aforesaid nice points.

  We had gotten into the habit for the last several book club sessions of meeting in Kurt and Philip’s apartment. Not only were the chairs more comfortable than at Pauline’s but the food was substantially better. One evening, after the group had rescheduled a few times on my behalf, we finally met to discuss that most favored of all book-group reads, Pride and Prejudice. Pauline said that it was about time we got to it; every other book club in the country had discussed it years ago.

  I may have mentioned that I have a lot of unresolved anger toward Jane Austen, the result of having been given her complete works for my fourteenth birthday and thereby conditioned to believe, at an impressionable age, that Mr. Darcy was out there, waiting to be charmed by my sarcastic wit and to carry me off to Pemberley (or at least a mock-Tudor in Scarsdale). Jane Austen had raised my expectations, so that I was fated to be continually disappointed. I had grown up a lot in the past few months and become more grateful for the things in my life, but I still resented all those wasted years, looking for Mr. Darcy and coming up short. Finally, I would get a chance to trash Jane Austen.

  For book club that night, Kurt had gone all out with the spread in an effort to “build me up” (that I needed to gain weight for the first time in my diet-obsessed life was the upside of chemotherapy). There was a shrimp remoulade, a pear and avocado salad, a terrine of duck confit, and a lovely chocolate souffle, all laid out in the dining room wit
h its country French with splashes of Italian contemporary decor. Kurt’s culinary gifts greatly surpassed Pauline’s efforts, and she had given up trying to compete in this arena, satisfying herself with picking the books and leading the discussion. For this reason, perhaps, she seemed relieved when I arrived for this month’s group without my mother, who had insisted on accompanying me to the last meeting, where she hogged the floor even more than Bathsheba. The book under discussion had been Wuthering Heights, on which my mother had a lot to say, so that we all had to sit there while she expounded on how she would have “whipped that Heathcliff into shape.” Fortunately, she could not attend book club this month, as she had numerous other obligations. These included grocery shopping for Ellen Pontillo and straightening up Flanagan’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, which she reported was even more of a pigsty than mine. She had insinuated herself into the lives of these people and was determined to stay there whether they liked it or not.

  So, to get back to the Pride and Prejudice discussion, where she was, thankfully, not present, we were all seated on Kurt and Philip’s plushly upholstered chairs when Pauline launched in on the subject of our assigned text.

  “So why do you think this novel continues to be so popular?” she asked. “There are so many movie adaptations, not to mention all those novels that update the plot to the London singles scene or a Jewish retirement community in Boca Raton. Why do you think this is?”

  “Because Jane Austen is timeless,” said Karen, whose penchant for received opinion never failed to assert itself. Given her former success in finance, one had to wonder whether lots of people thinking like she did had caused the economic meltdown.

  “Personally, I couldn’t finish the novel,” noted Herb. “I rented the movie.”

  “Which one?” asked David. “There were a lot of them listed on Netflix.”

  “The old one. It was the shortest,” said Herb.

  “If you weren’t going to do the reading, you should at least have rented the BBC version with Colin Firth,” said Pauline severely. “The Hollywood movie, even though it stars Laurence Olivier, is hardly faithful to the book.”

  “I liked it,” shrugged Herb. (I liked it too—but I kept my mouth shut; there were larger issues at stake here for me than defending a 1940 movie.)

  “I didn’t expect the novel to be so funny,” noted Roger. “Some of the characters are good social caricatures. Mr. Collins, for example, reminds me of that lobbyist we’re always trying to get away from. Hirshberg. You know him, Derek. He’s always sucking up to the mayor.”

  “Hirshberg is a pain in the ass,” said Derek.

  “I’m just saying that if you think about him as a character in a novel, it makes him easier to take.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Derek, who, I can attest, has a very limited imagination.

  “I couldn’t get into it,” said David. “All that stuff about visits and balls. Who cares?”

  “Those things are part of the social network,” explained Pauline. “It’s the system that people used to get to know each other.”

  “To me, it’s dated,” insisted David. “The women are so focused on getting married. It’s depressing.”

  “They’re still focused on getting married,” said Pauline, “and why not? It’s normal to want to find a soul mate.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve missed the point,” broke in Bathsheba. “Jane Austen was a feminist avant la lettre. Elizabeth Bennet knows what she deserves and won’t settle for less.”

  “My view entirely,” chimed in Derek. “Elizabeth is an exceptional woman. She reminds me a lot of you, Bathsheba.”

  “Thank you, Derek. I appreciate the comparison. You have many good qualities as well.”

  “I am touched to hear you say that,” responded Derek.

  Let me pause here and allow you to take in the full effect of this mannerly if nauseating exchange. Over the past few months, this sort of thing had become characteristic of Derek and Bathsheba, who had undergone a transformation after entering couples therapy with Dr. Chitturi, an event that had occurred at my suggestion. It may seem odd that I would give advice to these individuals, for whom I had formerly entertained an aversion, but having gained the “perspective thing” from my cancer, I had become a kinder, gentler person. You have probably noted this already. As the playground mothers might have put it, my heart of gold was shining through my protective cynicism. So at an earlier book group meeting, when Derek and Bathsheba launched into an altercation regarding the wound suffered by Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises and its metaphorical connection to their relationship (too complicated to go into here, but you can imagine), I intervened with the suggestion that they might want to consult Dr. Chitturi, whose work I could vouch for. They had responded with surprising receptivity, perhaps recognizing that someone who could help me must, in the parlance of psychotherapy, be unusually gifted.

  I warned Dr. Chitturi beforehand that Derek and Bathsheba would represent a serious challenge, but she seemed unfazed. “Don’t worry, Suzanne,” she assured me, “compared to Indian couples, your battling friends will be a piece of cake.” I should note that Dr. Chitturi is a great believer in “saving the marriage,” a position she has honed with the arranged marriages that abound among her Indian peers. “It is imperative to respect each other first; from there, love will follow,” she explained, “unless the differences are too great and the couple is going to kill each other. But your friends sound like they share many similar qualities and are physically nonviolent. I would not want Derek for you, Suzanne, but for this woman with the unusual name, he seems to me to be well suited.”

  We at book club were thus spectators to the results of this therapeutic intervention. Derek was trying to show Bathsheba the requisite respect, and Bathsheba was trying to accept his effort. It is true that their often lengthy exchanges, which had something of the mannered formality of Jane Austen’s prose—or, if you will, of Dr. Chitturi’s British Raj speech patterns, but with a powerful dose of the saccharine—were not as entertaining as the vituperative give-and-take of yesteryear, but it would not have reflected the kinder and gentler me to prefer to see human beings suffer, however entertaining that might have been.

  It was after Derek and Bathsheba had engaged in this ritual of cloying mutual regard that I finally felt the need to speak up. “My problem with Jane Austen,” I interjected slowly, “is that she misleads her more impressionable readers. She gives women unrealistic expectations. What do her heroines do except wait around for Mr. Right to come along and recognize their worth? It’s an unhealthy model for young women to follow.”

  Everyone looked at me with surprise and a bit of alarm. Who would have dreamed that Jane Austen could be unhealthy? I could see Karen calculating whether she was more or less unhealthy than the Roman forum at night, which had killed Daisy Miller awhile back. “But she’s a classic, and they teach her in all the women’s studies courses,” she noted apprehensively.

  “Yes, and I’m against it,” I declared. “As Bathsheba said, these novels teach women to have high expectations, but not to question whether their expectations are realistic or what they should do if they don’t get what they think they deserve.”

  “It’s fiction,” said Roger. “Aren’t you taking it too seriously?”

  “It’s been enshrined in our cultural canon, so it’s more than mere fiction,” I rejoined, my voice growing shrill. “It’s like when they used to say smoking was good for you; doctors recommended it, so more people did it. Same with Pride and Prejudice.”

  “You think Jane Austen is like cigarettes?” queried Herb, who was probably thinking that he ought to go back and try the book again.

  “I’m saying that it’s good literature but bad for its readers—or at least for young, impressionable ones. I wouldn’t have Rose read it until she’s in her twenties,” I noted, feeling it would be good to bring my argument closer to home— “for most women, I’d say their thirties, but Rose is exceptionally mat
ure.”

  Pauline and Karen both furrowed their brows, considering the point. They were already worrying about computer games and vaccines. Did they now have to worry about Jane Austen?

  “Do you think it’s bad for boys too, or only for girls?” queried Karen, hoping that Matthew might escape danger by virtue of his gender.

  This struck me as a good question, and I paused for a moment to consider it. If Jane Austen was bad for girls in giving them unrealistic expectations about men, it might be good for boys in giving them a standard to which to aspire. “I don’t know,” I finally acknowledged. “It might not have the same effect. But boys don’t usually read Jane Austen.”

  “Well, I love Jane Austen,” said Kurt, “not that I was your average boy. I had an Easy Bake oven and a Barbie collection. Besides, for me the novel wasn’t unrealistic. My Mr. Darcy did come.”

  Everyone looked at Philip, who smiled modestly. “If you want Mr. Darcy, you might have to settle for his being gay,” he noted.

  “That may well be,” said Pauline ruminatively. “Roger isn’t exactly Mr. Darcy. But I like him anyway. I guess I have low expectations.” Roger shrugged amiably at this.

  “Derek isn’t Mr. Darcy either,” said Bathsheba, “but at least he’s making an effort.”

  “Herb is more like Mr. Bingley,” noted Marsha. “That was fine for Jane Bennet, so it’s good enough for me.”

  Karen said that David was excellent with diapers and grocery shopping—and, really, when you came down to it, he probably did more than Mr. Darcy would ever do around the house.

  So there it was. They had all come to terms with their version of Mr. Right—not quite Mr. Darcy (with the exception of Philip, of course), but somehow adequate to their needs. They were all in their way happy—not ecstatic, not without some serious glitches that required intensive psychotherapy—but hey, they were getting along.