The Social Climber of Davenport Heights

by Pamela Morsi

  It counts as a five-pointer easily, I assured myself.

  The next few days were as carefully orchestrated and as skillfully staged as if we’d all memorized our scripts.

  David was endlessly available. He spent hours talking with Brynn about school, working with her on the jigsaw puzzle, telling her tales about his misspent youth at Harvard.

  In return she dutifully played a round of golf with him.

  I devoted my time to being the new-millennium version of Donna Reed. I decorated, baked, cleaned up, cooked, cleaned up and baked some more. My lines in this sitcom were limited to things such as:

  “Who wants hot popovers?”

  By Christmas morning, the shimmer on this shining vision of family life was beginning to dull.

  We opened gifts in our pajamas. We had each bought dozens of things, and the boxes and torn wrapping paper piled up around the room. When it was all opened and politely acknowledged, none of us was particularly pleased with what we got.

  David had bought me a pair of jewel-encrusted earrings—the type that his mother loved. I had a half-dozen similar pair from other occasions and I never wore any of them.

  I got him a little desktop humidor for his office. He thanked me before admitting that he’d given up cigars. A change that I hadn’t noticed.

  Brynn’s choices were far better than my own. She’d run up over two thousand dollars on department-store credit cards during her shopping trip to New York. But it was well worth it when David tore through the red and green tissue to find his new gold club.

  “This is exactly what I wanted,” he told Brynn.

  She rolled her eyes. “Like I couldn’t catch a hint,” she teased. “You’ve mentioned the Ray Cook putter in every conversation since October.”

  I realized that I’d heard about it several times myself, but I had never made the connection between what he wanted and what I could give him.

  Brynn had visited Elizabeth Arden for my gift, a beautifully presented basket of expensive bath items. She knew what a fan I was of a long soak. The bubble beads were moisturizing, non-allergic and oil-free whirlpool friendly. There was a bath mitt, a bath pillow and a pair of tub-safe champagne glasses. The pampered, self-indulgent Jane I had been in the past would have loved it.

  We thanked each other profusely with hugs all around. Then I headed to the kitchen to put together a Christmas breakfast. To my surprise, Brynn followed me.

  The pajamas she wore was actually an oversize gray T-shirt that bore the likeness of Monica Lewinsky wearing a white moustache. The caption beneath it read Not Milk.

  With a welcoming warmth June Allyson would envy, I got her seated at the prep island to watch me chop ingredients for omeletes.

  Her bleached-blond hair was pulled back into a messy wad held together with a giant turquoise plastic clip at the crown of her head. Strands escaped on either side of her fresh-washed face, giving her a young, vulnerable appearance.

  “So, Mother,” she began “are you still being Lady Bountiful all over town?”

  I shrugged a little guiltily.

  “I’m involved in a few activities,” I admitted.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “This is not the way you are, Mother.”

  She was right, of course. She knew me. But she was wrong, as well. She knew me as I’d always been.

  “I want to become a better person,” I told her. “I want to live my life differently.”

  Her expression was skeptical.

  “And what do you get out of this?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure I get anything out of it,” I said.

  “Well, I read something at school that says practicing acts of altruism makes people healthier and happier,” Brynn said.

  “Really?” I was surprised.

  “I guess there’s got to be some kind of payoff,” Brynn insisted. “Or people would never do it.”

  I thought about that for a long moment before I answered. “Maybe they would,” I told her.

  “Don’t be naive, Mother,” she said. “Everybody’s out for themselves.”

  “No, I don’t think they are,” I told her. “If a man runs into a burning building to save a child and he and the child both die, would it have been better for him to have stayed on the sidewalk.”

  “It would have been smarter,” she said. “He would have been alive.”

  “But could he have lived with the memory of that child’s screams in his ears?”

  “Eww, you’re getting morbid,” Brynn complained.

  “There is no guarantee the good things we do always turn out well for us,” I told her. “And when we do good, the world around us doesn’t suddenly become a visibly better place. But doing it anyway, I guess, is the real challenge.”

  Brynn leaned back in her chair and looked at me, puzzled.

  “Is this for real, Mom?”

  I laughed.

  “Are you still visiting that old man every chance you get?”

  “Chester? Yes, I try to see him every week,” I said. “He’s a very interesting man.”

  “He encourages your corybantic behavior.”

  “Corybantic?”

  Brynn hesitated, debating whether or not she wished to elaborate on her statement. She decided to do so.

  “Dr. Reiser says that your brush with death has manifested itself in changes reminiscent of a religious-conversion experience. It’s positively manic and this man, Chester, simply exacerbates the whole unstable situation.”

  This analysis belittled what had become, for me, a very important aspect of my life. And she made Chester sound like some sort of wild-eyed cult-figure swami.

  “I don’t think there is anything wrong with my wanting to be a kinder person,” I said. “I want to be a more caring citizen, an eager volunteer, a more understanding parent. Those are good things.”

  “Look, Mother,” she said, her expression long-suffering. “I am not opposed to your newfound social conscience. I’m sure Dr. Reiser is right—at your time of life you undoubtedly need validation and purpose. But leave me out of it, okay? You’ve had eighteen years to play mommy to me. For the first half of that you wouldn’t let me out of your sight, and in the second half, you could hardly bear the sight of me. I’m finally on my own now and I don’t want any of your last-minute largesse.”

  “I just love you and want to help you,” I told her.

  Brynn’s jaw was set stubbornly. “Help, unsolicited, is intrusion,” she said. “You’ve tried to see that I’ve had all the things that you always wanted. The problem is, those have never been the things that I’ve wanted. Now you want to be Claire Huxtable. Okay, but don’t expect me to be an enabler. I have my own life and the less contact I have with you the better.”

  David walked through the door all smiles. “How are my two best girls coming with that breakfast?”

  I’m not sure what the two of us looked like, but David’s happy expression sobered up immediately.

  “We’re almost ready,” I assured him with a smile deliberately bright. “If you and Brynn want to set the table…”

  Breakfast was a mostly silent affair. David did most of the talking, presenting a long and complicated discourse on how the swing plane, an imaginary line from the base of your neck to the ground, is the least understood and appreciated of the five golf fundamentals.

  He had the full attention of both myself and Brynn, as neither of us was willing to so much as glance in the other’s direction.

  I still had dishes in the sink when Edith and W.D. showed up. They were invited for a late holiday dinner at three o’clock, but apparently they couldn’t stay away. They had seen even less of Brynn than we had and monopolized her time for the rest of the day.

  That was all right with me. I knew that only time could lessen the sting of the words we’d spoken. And with Brynn involved with her grandparents, I could focus my attention on creating the perfect holiday meal. I’d had the goose and cranberry dressing catered, of course, but there were
plenty of salads and vegetable dishes for me to spend the day on.

  By three-thirty we were sitting at the dining table, festive with Christmas-tree Spode. David secured the camera on its tripod and set the timer so that we could all be happy and smiling around the table at the same time. The light from the flash had barely faded before the mood around the table darkened.

  My father-in-law said grace, evoking a generalized thankfulness that seemed perfunctory, as if our blessings were not heaven-sent but personally acquired. Still, he asked for more in the coming year—good health, a safe home and the family together. My thoughts drifted to Chester; alone today, he had none of those things. If I was going to expend energies on doing good, that wonderful man should certainly be on the receiving end of those efforts.

  W.D. finished his prayer with a hearty amen. David seconded it before rising to his feet. With good humor and exaggerated ceremony, he began carving the bird.

  I was smiling when I glanced over at Edith and caught her surveying the napkins and place settings with a critical eye.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh no, not wrong exactly,” she said. “You know, on Oprah’s holiday table, she chose to mix and match the colors and patterns.”

  “Really? Is she trying to be Martha Stewart now?”

  “Of course not!” Edith sounded vaguely insulted. “Martha Stewart is so…well, she’s not one of us—like Oprah.”

  It was truly astonishing that Edith would choose to identify with the populist rather than the patrician, but I smiled politely, unwilling to contradict her.

  “By mixing the colors and patterns, the presentation is so much more cozy and reflective of family,” she continued, critiquing my table. “This is so…well, so cold.”

  “The ivory tablecloth was a wedding present,” I pointed out. “From the Coburns. It’s been on our table every Christmas for the last twenty years.”

  “Hettie Coburn, God rest her soul, never had a smidgen of good taste in her little finger,” Edith said.

  Brynn touched the tablecloth as if contact with it was distasteful. “It’s older than I am,” she said, voicing disbelief.

  “Fine household goods become more valuable as they age,” I told her.

  Edith tutted and shook her head. “Things change,” she said. “Styles change.”

  “Tradition is important.”

  “Not if it’s boring,” Edith countered.

  “And this tablecloth is boring,” Brynn said a little too pointedly. “I suppose I’m going to get it when you die. That’s one of the downsides of being the only child, you inherit all your parents’ crap.”

  Edith tutted lightly, but corrected her, as well. “These are belongings, dear, not crap.”

  “Whatever,” Brynn responded, unwilling to antagonize her grandmother. “Anyway, I promise to give this to the thrift store.”

  Edith giggled girlishly, obviously tickled with my daughter’s cutting humor. I was not particularly amused.

  David began the dinner conversation by giving us a shot-by-shot description of his golf game with Brynn. He had obviously enjoyed playing with her, though he clearly felt that she had much room for improvement. Just as he got about midway through the course, his father interrupted him.

  “Did you see yesterday’s editorial page?” W.D. asked abruptly.

  David was momentarily taken aback. But recovered quickly enough to shrug and reply, “Not much news.”

  That was what David always answered. He rarely even looked at the newspaper. More often than not, I was the first to open the paper, quickly scanning the style section as I put it in the recycle bin.

  W.D. apparently didn’t require any feedback.

  “It’s bad enough that the media tilt every news story toward a liberal bias, but now, right at Christmastime, they play Scrooge to a federal tax cut.”

  “They came out against it?” David asked.

  “Oh, they say they’re neutral, not going to take a position on the issue,” W.D. explained. “But then they go and give half a column on the editorial page to that damn empty-headed bleeding heart, Scott Robbins. He’s mad because the top income brackets get the biggest part of the cut.”

  The man’s name caught my attention. I looked up.

  “We are the people who pay those taxes,” W.D. continued. “And when we get money back, we invest it, do the country some good.”

  David nodded and forked himself another piece of cranberry goose.

  “You give more money to some low-wage worker, he’s just going to spend it uselessly,” W.D. went on. “Oh, I suppose it helps cheap discount chains and the local beer joint, but it doesn’t do a thing for the economy as a whole.”

  “Scott Robbins?” I asked. “Where have I heard that name?”

  W.D. looked over at me, obviously annoyed.

  “You’ve seen his name a least once a week in the ‘Letters to the Editor,’” W.D. complained. “The damn fool has some stupid opinion on practically everything.”

  Not having read the “Letters to the Editor” at any time in my memory, I was pretty sure that was not the source of this familiarity. I mentally scanned the list of people who worked in my office, current and former clients, people at church, the folks that I’d met in charities and service organizations. I couldn’t come up with anyone. Still, I knew that name, but I just didn’t know from where.

  I shrugged and let it go.

  Chapter 10

  THE REST OF Christmas Day was basically pleasant. I volunteered to do all the cleanup and nobody tried to talk me out of it. Having had the main dish and the desserts catered, the job didn’t really take me all that long, but I lingered at it.

  Occasionally I glanced into the family room where Brynn, David and his parents played Scattergories with more noise and enthusiasm than I could have ever brought to the game.

  W.D. and Edith had been proud and doting with David. They were the same way with Brynn. They treated her as if she were the brightest, wittiest, most delightful human on the planet. And she responded by being exactly what they expected her to be.

  They seemed so patrician. So comfortable and at ease with the advantages of their life. As I watched them from the kitchen, I realized that this was the world that I had wanted so very long ago back in that tacky little house in Sunnyside. I had been watching from a distance then. Now, in my own home, I was watching from a distance still.

  Brynn was relaxed and charming. She laughed at all her grandfather’s jokes. Though these occasionally covered such themes as politics and religion, they mostly concerned the personal lives of senior citizens. She gave as good as she got with punch lines of her own on subjects more pertinent to those of her age. But basically they were both finding humor in sex, drinking and bathroom habits.

  Edith giggled ad infinitum. The Christmas cognac may have had something to do with that.

  David rolled his eyes and accepted the part of reasonable person, condemned to spend the evening with three goofballs.

  Occasionally one of them would call out to me.

  “Jane! Jane! Did you hear that one?” David asked. “The reason why the chicken crossed the road? To prove to the armadillo that it could be done.”

  “Mom, do you know how many sorority girls it takes to change a lightbulb?” Brynn called out. “Two. One to call Daddy for help and the other to pour the Diet Pepsi.”

  I listened to them, laughed with them. But I didn’t go in and join them. It wasn’t as if I felt unwelcome. It was more that I didn’t want to intrude on what was obviously a Kodak moment. I gave myself four points for staying alone in the kitchen.

  W.D. and Edith left just after nightfall, looking happy but exhausted from their busy day. Edith made a date for shopping with Brynn the next morning. I would never have wanted to visit the mall the day after Christmas. But those two were serious consumers, relishing the challenge.

  W.D. moaned, as if the idea of Edith and her granddaughter alone in the mall with credit cards was
a fearful thing to contemplate. We laughed appropriately.

  As they drove away, David, Brynn and I watched from the porch, arms around each other’s shoulders until they were out of sight. Brynn stepped away from me rather deliberately, I thought, before walking silently back into the house.

  David fabricated some urgent business and disappeared for a couple of hours.

  Seating herself on the couch in the family room, one leg bent beneath her, Brynn booted up her laptop and was sharing Christmas disaster stories with a chat room from her dorm. Her own undoubtedly included the morning’s confrontation with her overbearing and unpleasant mother.

  With no one to talk to, nothing to do and the cleanest kitchen in Davenport Heights, I retired to my room. I combed my hair out, brushed my teeth and dressed comfortably in my sleeping-sheep pajamas.

  I lay down in bed and resigned myself to fanning listlessly through the stack of unread fashion magazines that had piled up on my night table. There were a lot of them. I was so far behind, I hadn’t even seen the layout of sexy vampire costumes that promised to score wild tricks and wicked treats for you and your honey on Halloween.

  With a disgusted grimace, I decided to just give up the end of the year as a loss. I found a January issue. It was devoted almost exclusively to diet and exercise. There were glossy photos of beautiful fit young starlets in evening gowns, martini in hand, declaring that they had lost five pounds just by giving up pasta.

  A former Olympic athlete demonstrated her new body-contouring regimen. Just looking at the pictures made me tired, sweaty and out of breath. I pulled down the covers to get a look at my own thighs.

  “Well, Jane,” I admonished myself aloud, “it is definitely time for another visit to Dr. Plastic and his amazing lard-sucking machine.”

  I skipped through the rest of the weight-loss advice, the dozens of cigarette ads and the lovely scenic vistas touting freshness for that time of the month. There was a ten-question quiz on how to recognize the clues when your man is cheating. I glanced through casually.

  “I see that building a house with his girlfriend is not mentioned anywhere.”