by Luanne Rice
“It’s probably Alzheimer’s disease. I wonder why no one has tried hard to get it diagnosed? We’ve always called it senility. Honora especially—it hurt her terribly when Pem turned ornery and forgetful, but she must have been relieved to take over as head of the Point. When I joined the family, she was really under Pem’s thumb.
“Honora. Aren’t the dinners different without her? She was comical, the way she played the worrier, and she knew it. She played it up. She knew if she got everyone pegging her as The Worrier, she could harass us with impunity. Those predawn phone calls of hers used to drive me crazy. You know, she worried, but she never played The Worrier until after Pem started to go. I think Georgie is destined to step into that role.
“I remember when Georgie brought Nick home for the first time. They had met in Washington, I guess, when he was still in law school and she was working for that pawnbroker. She used to go to the ends of the earth to get a weird job, and Nick was the first decent guy she brought home. Of course I instantly saw a fellow lawyer, someone I wouldn’t mind having around here. An ally in this House of Bennison. The first night we met him, Clare told me Georgie was going to marry him. I asked her if Georgie had said so, and she said no, she just knew. That’s the way those sisters are—tight as tight.
“After they got married, I could tell Honora really liked him. She’d play up to him, trying to get him to laugh at her jokes or, I don’t know—get him to ask her about her early days when she was making it big as a meteorologist. She must have thought I was jealous because one day she said to me, ‘I love you both like sons, but you’ll always be first.’ That meant a lot to me, and I’ve never known why.
“I think of Honora as a stable influence on the Point. The rest of us might rock the boat, but not Honora. All of us want her on our side. Isn’t that true? Who would want to displease her? I remember once she acted very disgusted with me, and I couldn’t stand it. She gave me the feeling I was rocking the boat, making it tip, and she made me sit down and steady it. That’s it. She likes things to move on an even keel. If I could pass anything of Honora on to Eugene and Casey, it would be that. Go ahead and rock the boat, but carefully, and know when to sit down.”
19
THEY SAY WHEN SOMEONE IS DYING THEY can relive their entire lives in a matter of minutes. I wondered whether Honora had had time for that. Had she lain in her bed watching the ghosts of people and events play before her eyes? Or had she died before they had had the chance? Had her pain lasted long? I found myself spending time, when I should have been answering correspondence, reliving my own life, as if I hoped to cheat sudden death by having already run through my memories. One afternoon, sprawled in a sunny patch on the floor, knitting yellow booties, I was struck by what a homebody I was. I had gone from being a shrinking violet afraid to leave home, to a rebel who searched the world for, as Donald had said, weird jobs, back to being a homebody again.
For a period Honora and I had fought all the time. She had been shocked when I hadn’t wanted to go to college.
“My daughters have to go to college,” she had said, as if it were that simple, case closed. Dutifully I acquired and completed application forms. I went on interviews, often accompanied by Honora, who would coach me on what to say, then pump me afterwards for a sense of how I had impressed the interviewer. We had many pleasant lunches in the college towns of Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont.
After receiving my acceptances on April 15, I enrolled at Wellesley. For the first time in my life I had nametapes to iron into my clothes. I subscribed to a linen service that picked up my dirty sheets and towels every Monday and left clean ones. My mother gave me a season’s ticket to the Visiting Orchestra series. She and Pem drove me up to Boston in September, and I was home the second weekend of October.
“I’m not going back,” I said. “I’ve always hated school, and that was before you were paying thousands of dollars a semester for it.”
“The money doesn’t matter,” Honora said. “We’ve saved for your education since you were a baby.” Her fingers twitched, probably itching to strangle me. “Do you want to see a counselor? Would that help?”
“I want to work.”
She emitted a guttural howl, as if someone had murdered one of her children; in a perverse way, I guess someone had.
“Mom, it’s not so indecent. Not everyone goes to college.” But of course everyone did; the only people my age who didn’t go to college were either severely disturbed or dishwashers.
“You’ll never get a good job. And I’m not thinking of tomorrow—I’m thinking ten years down the road. Do you want to waste your life in an office, typing someone else’s work? Are you out to get married, meet some guy who will support you and expect you to cook his dinners and have his babies? Georgie, you are in for the shock of your life.”
“I don’t need a college degree to succeed.”
Her breath was coming quick and shallow. “You’ll do it on your own. You’re not going to live at home, supported by me, while you waste your life.”
That came as a mild shock, and I took it as fighting words. “Fine. You want to kick me out of the house?”
“Yes. See how you do on your own.”
I turned toward my room, to throw a few things into my knapsack and hit the road before dark, and she threw a lamp at me. It struck the small of my back. Then she tackled me, and I realized I was running into my room with my mother riding piggyback. “Get off, get off,” I shrieked, but I couldn’t shake her.
“Are you taking drugs? Is it some boy?” she cried.
I wiggled out of her grasp. I ran out the front door, past Pem, who passed me a handful of dollars, and I didn’t come home for six months.
I visited Clare at Radcliffe, where she was doing a dual major in biochemistry and studio art. She let me spend the night in her room. “You realize of course that Mom is terrified by the idea of a daughter ill equipped to be anything but the best,” she said. “She maintains that is the way to avoid domination.”
“Right. Only she is allowed to dominate us.”
Clare laughed, then went back to working up her lab report. She lied when Honora called to ask if she had seen me. The next morning she lent me a hundred dollars. I kissed her, then hitchhiked to New Bedford, where I got a job on a scallop boat.
I went to sea with men, shucking scallops. We would spend a week on Georges Bank, dredging for sea scallops. It was the most degrading job I could find. In retrospect, I wonder why I was trying to punish myself. I would lie in my bunk, enduring rude comments like “If it smells like fish, eat it.” They rustled my curtains; in a way that sickens me now, I mildly enjoyed it. The men called me their mascot. I fell for a bearded sailor on a different scallop boat, then quit going to sea, to stay in his house and cook for him. Just as Honora had predicted.
One day I met Professor Arthur, someone my parents had known at Woods Hole, buying live bait on the wharf. I was so happy to see a familiar face, I told him the circumstances of my life. He rescued me, leaving his minnows on the counter, as urgently as if he were saving a kidnapping victim. He took me to Woods Hole, where I lived with him and his wife and worked as Dr. Nage’s research assistant. We were studying wave heights in the Bermuda Triangle. On one of our cruises into the Atlantic, the scent of danger and mystery spelled romance for me and Dr. Nage. Soon afterward I fled Woods Hole.
My quest for, as Donald says, “weird jobs” lasted years and took me to Mad River Glen, where I worked as a chairlift attendant; Salem, Massachusetts, where I directed a children’s theater; Ozone Park, New York, where I worked the afternoon shift in a soup kitchen. The letters I wrote home managed to convince Honora that interesting, if not high-paying, work existed without university degrees. I was developing a love for observation. All of those jobs were preparing me for the Swift Observatory, but only one was preparing me for Nick.
I stood behind the counter at the Brer Rabbit Pawnshop on the north side of Dupont Circle. I was surrounded by dusty astr
olabes, brass bookends, a Queen Anne highboy, leatherbound volumes of Shelley. Under the glass counter sat gold pocket watches, diamond earrings, World War II medals, and antique cameos. Mr. Big, as the shop owner referred to himself, had stepped out for coffee and a corn muffin. Although I had been hired to dust and answer the phone, he sometimes left me in charge of the shop, telling me to “stall the sellers as long as possible.” This shop was an observer’s dream. I watched the sad faces of people who parted with family treasures, the greedy faces of thieves who fenced their goods to Mr. Big. Families whose houses had been robbed would arrive, asking whether anyone had recently sold a Seth Thomas steeple clock or a pair of silver candlesticks. This was the sleazy fringe of breaking and entering; I felt guilty by association, but I was too mesmerized to quit.
One day Nick walked in. He wore a tan trenchcoat; his black eyes flashed. He looked like a private eye. From the moment he entered, he was casing the merchandise. If he hadn’t been so fantastically handsome, I might have been afraid he was about to rob me.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“Yes, please. Do you have any diamond earrings for sale? I’d like to buy my girlfriend a birthday present.”
I whisked my feather duster along the glass tabletop. “If you don’t mind waiting, I’m sure the owner will be back in a minute.”
“Don’t you work here?”
“Yes, but I’m just the cleaning lady.” He peered at me through the raven curls falling across his eyes. If he was trying to assess me, this is what he saw: a pale face, dark hair in a pixie cut, white blouse with lace collar. Mr. Big had recently told me to quit dressing like a librarian, but that was my style and I was stuck with it.
“When’s he coming back?” Nick asked, leaning forward.
“I don’t know,” I said, catching his excitement.
“Then we don’t have much time.” He explained to me that his girlfriend’s apartment on Capitol Hill had been robbed, that he was spending that afternoon away from his incredibly demanding legal studies, looking for her diamond earrings. He described them to me. I told him I never saw the merchandise until it appeared in the glass cases. “Are they here?” I asked.
“I don’t see them,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got to get home to study torts. If you happen to see some diamond earrings with little pearls dangling from them, will you call me?”
“Sure,” I said, thinking how in love he must be to spend his valuable time chasing after his girlfriend’s baubles, how clever he was to set me up as a watchdog for them.
The earrings appeared the following Friday. I called the number he had given me. I had half expected a girl to answer, but Nick did. “They’re here,” I said.
“Be right there.”
Hours passed. Finally Mr. Big told me he was going out for some tea and toast; the minute he left, Nick rushed in.
“I’ve been sitting in the park, waiting for him to leave,” Nick explained. He held up his Criminal Procedure book and grinned, letting me know his brain hadn’t been idle. I showed him the earrings; he said they were Allie’s.
“The case is locked,” I said. “Mr. Big keeps the key on him.”
“Shit. I can’t afford to buy them back. How much do you think they cost?” We tried to read the little white tag. Mr. Big always attached tags to the jewels, but tucked them underneath where no one could possibly read them.
“I’m going to do what a woman must do, but this means quitting my job,” I said. I broke the glass with a brass bookend, grabbed the earrings, and ran out the back door with Nick close behind. We took the endless escalator into the Dupont Circle Metro station and lost ourselves in the crowd.
Nick was beaming with admiration. “I can’t believe you just did that. It was fantastic. You wound up, you broke the glass, just like that. What’s your name?”
“Georgie Swift.”
“What made you work for a creep like that in the first place?”
“It was interesting,” I said, wondering what I was going to do next. I couldn’t go back to the place I had been staying, because Mr. Big had the address. I had heard about the leg-breaking techniques of shysters like him.
“I’d like to take you out to dinner,” Nick said. “Please—it’s the least I could do.”
I felt so disappointed. This great romantic hero who would risk his legal studies for his true love was inviting me out for dinner. But not so disappointed I wouldn’t accept. “What about Allie?” I asked.
“She’s busy tonight. In fact, she’s out of town.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said.
We dined at the Foundry, a canal-side place in Georgetown full of hanging plants and pale wood, every law student’s idea of the perfect restaurant. I wore the same clothes I had been wearing all day, since I could never again return to the fleabag I shared with two waitresses. Nick had changed into a gray tweed jacket and yellow wool tie. He ordered the wine with grace. He seemed not to notice the way my eyes darted from side to side, watching out for Mr. Big or his henchmen.
“That was a lovely thing you did, searching for Allie’s earrings,” I said.
“She’ll be happy to get them back.”
“Have you been together long?”
“Since our sophomore year at college.”
“Oh.” I calculated—four years. They must be very serious.
“But we’re not exactly ‘together’ anymore. We still care for each other, but we see other people. In fact . . .” He explained that he had fallen out of love with her, then felt guilty about it since his enrollment in law school had motivated her to move to Washington. “She felt so terrible when her apartment was robbed. She told me it was my fault, luring her here. She accused me of convincing her we’d be together for the rest of our lives, then leaving her.”
“Did you do that?”
“No. I did think we would get married—I thought I wanted that. But then I found out we’re very different in the real world than we were at college. She likes parties every night, getting dressed up in pretty dresses and diamond earrings, meeting new people and dancing till midnight. She’s very bored with me because I have to study all the time.” Nick stared intently at a wild philodendron hanging just beside my head. “The sad thing is, I like to study. I can’t see myself turning into a socialite the minute I finish law school. She keeps trying to convince me I’ll change, that the circumstances of my life are constraining right now, that I’ll see things differently later. But I don’t think I will. Once I told her I’d rather talk than dance, and she laughed.”
“But if you’re breaking up with her, why did you go looking for her earrings?”
“She looks pretty in those earrings. She loves them. I’m not really sure why.”
“Where is she now?”
“In New York, looking for an apartment.”
“Oh,” I said. Then he asked me about my life, and I told him about Honora, Pem, Clare, and Donald, then about my string of weird jobs, which made him laugh. He paid the check, and we went for a slow walk along the canal. In a dark spot beneath a willow tree he pointed at the water.
“I just saw a fish jump,” he said. We stared for a few seconds at the whirl of concentric rings, and then he leaned down to kiss me. I fell in love during that kiss. We slept together that night and, with few and necessary exceptions, we have slept together every night since.
“I’m mad about him,” Honora said the first night I brought him home, which was also the night I asked him to marry me.
“What’s his name again?” Pem asked, already starting to slip.
“Nicholas Symonds.”
“He has a first-rate mind,” Honora said, glowing. “I’ve never met a lawyer who can talk the way he does about Blake’s metaphysics.”
I smiled; I had told Nick that Honora was notorious for testing Clare’s and my boyfriends by asking them about Blake’s metaphysics. Donald had failed the test, but Honora had embraced him anyway.
“Did you see how he polished off his lunch?
” Pem asked. “I like a boy who likes to eat.”
For their own reasons, Honora and Pem had loved Nick from the start, and he had loved them. If he could discuss Blake with Honora, he could just as easily discuss the Providence Steamrollers with Pem. And he could discuss anything with me.
20
ONE NIGHT PEM WAS WALKING FROM HER bedroom to the bathroom when she tripped on a braided rug and sprained her ankle. The next morning was Saturday; Nick and I drove her to Dr. Cooke’s. The doctor’s expression seemed stern as he wrapped the bandage around her foot and up her black-and-blue leg. He checked her burned arm, pronounced it healed. Then he asked her to sit in the waiting room, under the watchful eye of his nurse, while he talked to Nick and me.
“This can’t go on. You must see that,” he said. “It’s time to put Pem in a nursing home.”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Dr. Cooke said. “What will be next? Will she succeed in lighting herself on fire? Will she drive you two so crazy you’ll start to hate her? Don’t think it can’t happen—I’ve seen old people whose families have loved them forever, then start to neglect them horribly because they just can’t stand the responsibility anymore.”
“We have a nurse.”
“One nurse needs to sleep at night. At nursing homes they have shifts, where someone is always on duty. Have you ever looked at Sussex Gardens? Or Steamboat Landing?” He named two rest homes on the same road in Sussex, a stretch to which my family had always referred as “Convalescent Promenade.” Old people were always hobbling or being pushed in wheelchairs down the road.
“No, I can’t say I’ve ever visited those places,” I said pleasantly, glaring at Nick, wanting his help. He sat there with his hands folded, looking straight ahead. I noticed three gray hairs behind his ear.
“Georgie,” Dr. Cooke said, “I know your mother intended to keep Pem at home. That was admirable and understandable. They’re mother and daughter. They’ve lived together for years. But you and Nick shouldn’t bear the burden. You’re starting your own family. Free yourself.”
