by Nancy Thayer
For fifty years she had lived her life by one passionate principle: Let her children grow up unharmed and she would not complain about her lot in life.
Well, it had worked, that superstitious pact with Fate. Her four children were grown up, and she had not complained.
Nor had she tried to change a thing about the way she had lived.
Gracious was the word many people used to describe her, even her children, but Jean knew the word that fit her best was determined. It amazed her now that she had the leisure and the distance to look back at herself and see just what a controller she had been. Oh, how she had held on to what she had!
Sitting in the slanting evening sunlight, drinking Pernod at a tiny sidewalk cafe, Jean smiled, remembering how shortly after Diane was born, when the tail-like stub of her umbilical cord fell off one day in her daughter’s diaper, she had taken the bit of flesh that had bound her daughter to her and put it in a small white porcelain box trimmed with brass and sculpted with flowers. She’d intended to keep it forever. One day a few months later, however, she’d opened the box to find to her horror that the cord was shriveled and blackened, a dried-out worm of flesh. She had wept. But not for long. Her live baby had cried out, needing her, and Jean had tossed the cord out in the trash, although wrapped in flowered paper, as if it were a present.
Didn’t people do strange things? Having children had made her such a coward in life that she drove everyone she loved mad with her constant exhortations to take care. But it was from Jean herself that her constant vigilance over the fates of her children exacted the highest cost.
For thirty years after her first child’s birth Jean had not been able to sleep at all on the nights when the children went on school trips in buses or other people’s cars or started driving themselves or were even moderately ill or had an especially bad time with a friend, teacher, sport, or class, or were waiting to hear if they’d gotten into the college of their choice.
Her insomnia had irritated Al so much that during those times when she couldn’t sleep she still pretended to for the first hour they were in bed together. Then when he was oblivious to the world, she slipped from the bed with a burglar’s stealth, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Certain tasks were available to her to perform in those dark hours—nothing pleasurable, for she feared her pleasure would jinx her children. She could not, for example, even knit a sweater or crochet an afghan or embroider sheets or linen guest towels. She could not make jam, because she found the scented alchemy of bubbling fruit too delightful. She could clean the bathrooms, scrub the kitchen floor, wash out the refrigerator, line the kitchen shelves with fresh paper, iron damask tablecloths and napkins—very hard physical labor, indeed—and there had even been times in fine weather when she had swept out the garage and washed its windows by moonlight, in her robe.
Pleasant, her black maid, would always greet Jean when she arrived for work in the mornings with, “Lord Almighty, Miz White. What you worried about now?”
Her life, the lives of members of her family, were exceedingly, even excessively fortunate, she knew. Their grand southern colonial house with its four white pillars, its expanse of shining windows, its sheltering trees, beautiful garden, and, inside, its numerous wonderful rooms was the best any family could ever have had, Jean always had thought. Although she had grown up in a house not unlike this, and not far away, in a similar, safe, wealthy neighborhood, still Jean was often brought to a state of amazed wonder that she was living out her life in this beautiful palladium.
Like the chatelaine of a castle or the verger of a church, she oversaw with scrupulous organization that the chimneys and furnace were cleaned in the fall, the trees pruned in the spring, the gardens planted, weeded, fed, and tended during the warm months, the windows washed, the carpets cleaned, the walls freshly painted every few years, the newest household appliances installed in the most accommodating places and, of course, that the house was kept clean, tidy, and gracious every day. Fresh flowers on the hall and dining-room tables. Indian corn on the front door and pumpkins on the steps in the fall. The blue-and-white striped polished-cotton cushions for the wicker furniture on the sun porch recovered every year.
Perhaps because of her devotion to the guardianship of her house and the lives of her children, as the years progressed, Jean grew less and less comfortable being away from her home. It was not a matter of neurosis—she was not afraid to go out into the world, not really. It was that as long as she was in her house, she felt she was keeping her children safe. On one level, she knew that made absolutely no sense at all. How could her presence in one structure or another keep Bert or Art from falling off the jungle gym or getting hit with a baseball? Why should her lunching with a friend in a pleasant restaurant cause Diane or Susan to be teased or snubbed at school or to skin their knees at recess? Perhaps the habit had evolved from her desire to be there if she was called: with four children to drive to scouts, skating, birthday parties, riding lessons, dentists, and so on, there had been times when one child needed her and she wasn’t available because she was in the car driving another child somewhere. No matter the excuse, her failure to be there made her guilty in both the child’s eyes and her own. If car phones had been available when her children were growing up, she probably would have gotten one.
Lord. If beepers had been available back then, Jean would have given a portable machine to each child and worn four color-coded sets at her waist, so that the moment a child needed her, he or she could summon her at once. Or one of those little gadgets advertised on television now for the very old or crippled, something attached to the body that could be pushed with one finger, alerting someone to their peril. Why didn’t every mother in America have her children wired in such a way, now that the technology made such things possible?
As the children grew up and left home, the world they went out into seemed so alarming that her need to protect them never completely lessened its hold. Bert, Susan, and Art had all in one way or another been involved in the Vietnam War, while Diane kept making trips to the strangest places: Nepal, Bolivia, even Russia. As her children’s lives moved outward, so she allowed hers to as well, but just a little. She ladled soup for the indigent in Washington’s inner city, worked tirelessly on fund-raising campaigns, helped with the learning handicapped at the local school, stuffed envelopes, made phone calls, typed letters—her house became a headquarters for charity.
Then, in Vietnam, Art had a nervous breakdown and came home for a while. Jean had to take care of him and to run interference between Art and Al, because Al was angered by his son’s reaction to the war. It was during that period when she became a grandmother, suddenly subject to the pleas of her daughters and daughter-in-law to come help with the babies, and she gladly went.
Finally, over the past decade, she and Al had been alone in the big house, and at last her superstitious obsession for safekeeping faded. Of course all the children and their families came home together for gigantic greeting-card Christmases, and again in separate groups for summer vacations, a week at a time, to have “Grandmother” spoil them all; entire weeks of each year were given over to the pleasure of her family, but that was a different matter. At some point, somewhere along the way, Jean had relinquished her vigilance.
Yet over the past years as her husband’s illness had been detected, treated, and finally surrendered to, Jean had wondered if perhaps Al’s death was not due to some failure on her part to protect him, for she knew that she had never worried as fiercely about him as she had about the children. Al had died of lung cancer. He had given up smoking in his forties, by his own decision and not because of her request: Should she have nagged him earlier to stop? Certainly she had always seen to it that his meals were healthful and well balanced; other than that, she’d had little to do with the supervision of Al’s health. He was fastidious and disciplined about the state of his body, faithfully keeping appointments to have his teeth cleaned and his blood pressure checked. Al had wanted to have a career in
the navy—Jean had not allowed him to do so—but habits ingrained from his navy years stayed with him always. He maintained his body as if it were a necessary machine.
No, she had not been responsible, through sins of omission or commission, for Al’s death at the age of seventy-four. She had been a good wife, but she had been a splendid mother. No matter how tiring, how difficult the tasks required of her as a mother, she had performed them with a joyful heart, with a completely natural spontaneity; but the role of wife to Albert White had not come with such perfect ease; a conscious decision always had to intervene during the most crucial moments between the knowledge of what she should do as a good wife and the actual performance of the deed. Always, that moment, that pause.
A shallow breath quickly taken.
A moment not of anger or even of regret, but still: that moment, that pause.
Then the act performed.
These thoughts now caused Jean White to rise from her seat at the charming sidewalk cafe, to rise and walk, move, look, distract herself. She had never been unfaithful to Albert White, and as far she knew, he had not been unfaithful to her. An immense fondness and regard for him had always filled her heart, formed her actions, for he was a good man, a lovable man. During his final illness she had devotedly waited with him by his bedside for hours, holding his hand, above all seeing to it that he would not feel alone. The last face that Albert White saw before he died had been his wife’s, and the last words he had heard had been her words: “I love you.”
At his funeral, she had grieved; she had wept. Her sorrow was real, but it was not for herself. What she felt for herself, widowed wife of beloved husband, was release.
She’d lived a good, even a virtuous life. She had no regrets. But still, it was such a profound pleasure to go off on her own to this magical city, to remember with aching fondness the life she had dreamed of living when she was young.
1939
War Stories
She looked like a woman of glamour and mystery. Doubly screened by a gauze of smoke from her cigarette and the polka-dotted veil of her cocky black hat, Jean Marshall sat with a group of intense, intellectual young men and women around a table at the Algonquin Hotel, drinking a very dry martini, listening to Stanley Friedman and Hal Farmer argue.
Hal kept looking at her. Jean thought he’d definitely try to seduce her tonight. Of course, she’d have to put up a show of resistance—she didn’t want to seem easy, but she’d been waiting for this night ever since she’d set eyes on him in Cambridge. Although that wasn’t why she’d joined the staff of War Stories; and they wouldn’t have accepted her if she hadn’t been talented and dedicated. She had joined the staff, first, because she believed in peace—believed that her work could help move the world toward peace. Soon she came to realize that the co-editor, Hal Farmer, was the most excitingly brilliant man she’d ever met.
She was determined to have a significant life. When she heard that the editors were going to New York over Christmas vacation to try to raise funds for the journal, she decided to head for New York, too. She lied to her parents about the dates of her Radcliffe vacation.
Tonight, as Hal Farmer sat talking, each word that he fired into the group—“edition” … “issue” … “acknowledgment” … “errata” … heated her blood. Each time he looked at her, her cheeks flushed, her heart flipped.
Everything about the man was exciting, electric, rebellious—from his wiry, fiery red hair to the ink-stained tips of his fingers. Behind round, heavily rimmed glasses his ice-blue eyes flashed. He’d paid little attention to her back in Cambridge; he was usually sequestered in his office, the inner sanctum that she had yet to penetrate. But tonight he’d given her a long look and a slow smile as he purposefully pulled out the chair next to hers and sat down beside her. All evening he’d argued and raged with his normal concentrated zeal, but under the table his thigh pressed steadily against hers. Tonight her real life would begin.
Then she saw a man pushing his way through the crowded hotel lobby. Her heart fell through the floor. She didn’t think he’d seen her yet, but he was headed toward her table, and there could be only one reason he was here.
“Jeepers,” Jean whispered in despair, and because she couldn’t think of anything better to do, she quickly ducked under the table. Squatting on the floor among the trousered and silk-stockinged legs, Jean pulled her elbows to her sides and bent her head so that her hat wouldn’t be crushed by the tabletop.
“Hey, kid, what are you doing?” Her friend Myra lifted the tablecloth and peeked down at Jean.
Before Jean could answer, she saw a pair of perfectly polished black shoes plant themselves near the table.
“Jean. Come out from under there at once.”
There was no escape. There was not even a graceful way out.
“Jean. Come out at once or I’ll come in and get you.”
She felt her cheeks flaming with embarrassment as she wriggled back up onto her chair, knocking her hat over one eye in the process. Still she tried to brave it out.
“Bobby! I didn’t know you were in New York! What a surprise!”
“Jesus Christ, Jean. Have you lost your mind?” Bobby replied. “Now come on. I’m taking you home.”
“Well, of course, dear brother, if that’s what you want. I didn’t realize, but wouldn’t you like to join us for a—” Jean babbled, gathering up her cigarette case and purse, smiling gaily, keeping her voice light, trying to save herself from total humiliation.
“Now, Jean.”
With a roll of her eyes indicating the affectionate tolerance necessary in dealing with her brother, Jean shrugged her raccoon coat up over her shoulders.
“If you’ll all excuse me,” she said to the grinning group, “I believe my brother has come to take me home.”
“You’re damn right I have,” Bobby said, taking Jean firmly by the arm. Then, with frightening insight, he fixed his angry glare on Hal Farmer and said, “And for your information, bud, my sister is nineteen years old.”
Bobby led Jean away from the stunned group. Before they’d reached the door to the street, an explosion of laughter burst from the table, shelling through Jean’s dignity. Tears clouded her eyes and a sob rose in her throat.
“How dare you!” she spat at her brother once they were out on the street.
Without answering, he pulled her through the throng of holiday shoppers, along Forty-fourth Street, to the spot where his Terraplane Coupe was double-parked. Then he opened the passenger door and shoved her inside. By the time he’d gone around the car and climbed into the driver’s seat, Jean’s tears were in full force.
“I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life!” she cried. “That was the most awful thing I’ve ever experienced. How could you have done that to me!”
“Someday you’ll thank me,” Bobby said gruffly, pulling out into traffic. Cars and cabs choked the streets, their headlights splintering the December twilight.
“How did you know where to find me? Why did you even come looking?”
“It was Al who got me started—”
“Oh, Al!” Jean snapped impatiently. “It would be Al!”
“You’d written him that Radcliffe’s Christmas vacation started the fifteenth of December, but you wrote Mom and Dad that it started the nineteenth. I got worried and called Midge. She told me you’d gone to New York and would be at the Algonquin.”
“So much for secrets between friends.” Jean sniffed.
“Jean, you’re lucky I found you! That crowd is much too fast for you.”
“How do you know? You don’t know anything about them! You don’t know anything about me! You’ve made a total ass of yourself and of me as well!”
“They’re a bunch of pseudointellectual Commies, that’s who they are. I know exactly who they are. And that literary review you’ve got hooked up with will be nothing more than a propaganda rag. Nice work, Jean. Dad and Mom would be proud.”
Fresh tears flooded Jean’s eyes. “You
can be a real jerk when you want to,” she said.
They passed through the Holland Tunnel, heading toward New Jersey and the road south. For a few moments, as the lights of the city and its spell were eclipsed, Bobby did not reply. When he did speak again, the anger was gone from his voice.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk, Jeanie. I’m just trying to protect you. Hell, I just finished driving six hours straight and now I’ve got to turn around and do it again.”
“I guess I should be grateful,” Jean said, moderating her voice in return, “but honestly, Bobby, I’m not. I’m mad. I’m a big girl now. Why don’t you let me make my own mistakes?”
“Jean, I’m five years older than you are. I’ve been out in the world. I know how things work. I know how men think. I—”
“Bobby, for your information, Hal Farmer wasn’t chasing me. I was chasing him.”
“Not to marry?” Bobby was shocked enough to take his eyes off the road and look at his sister.
“No, Bobby,” Jean said carefully, as if speaking to a dullard. “Absolutely not for marriage. For something else completely … frivolous.”
Immediately she sensed her brother closing up, like a damned clam. It was as if invisible drawbridges were being drawn; she could almost hear the clank of chains. She had said just a little more than a modest woman should say to a brother. This withdrawing was something she associated only with men, because her father and her brother were such masters of the technique—while her mother would argue, explain, and fight until any issue between them had been settled, or at least exhausted.
“Well, I’m not going to tell any of that to Al,” Bobby said. “I’ll just say you went to New York for organizational meetings for the literary review.”
Jean sighed. Then she turned in her seat and faced Bobby. “Bobby, I know you love me, and you know I love you. As far as that goes, I love Al, in my own very sisterly way. But I’m not in love with Al, and I don’t want to marry him, and I’m not going to marry him. Why can’t you see that?”
