A Daughter's a Daughter

by Irene Vartanoff

  She gulped. Now there was no way to gracefully refuse.

  Dorothy continued to dominate the chat, boldly asking Bruce where he grew up and about his parents.

  “I actually was born here on Long Island in a town that was way out in the country then—Ronkonkoma.”

  “It’s still way out,” Dorothy said. She’d never been afraid to voice a trenchant opinion.

  “Anyway, I grew up in Queens, went to Hofstra, and got lucky. I went straight into writing science material for magazines. I’ve been doing it ever since. A simple story.”

  Dorothy gave him a straight look. “Nobody’s life is simple. Do you have a wife? Children? Grandchildren?”

  “Mom,” Pam remonstrated, horribly embarrassed. “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about his personal life.” Her mother had no sense of people’s privacy. People did not move out to solitary homes on the beach to become bosom buddies with the neighbors. Yet, Dorothy was barreling ahead in her usual fashion, insisting on making a friend of Bruce merely because he lived next door.

  “I don’t mind,” Bruce said. He took a sip from his water. “I was married for over twenty-five years, but we broke up after the kids were out of college. It was an amicable divorce. My wife—ex-wife, I should say—has remarried happily. We have a boy and a girl, who are thirty-four and thirty-two. Nobody is married yet, although I’m wondering if my son has found the girl. He’s living with someone, but he hasn’t indicated yet it’s for keeps.”

  “What about your daughter?” Pam asked. She might as well play a part in the conversation.

  “My daughter is gay.” He said it calmly as if his daughter’s sexual orientation hadn’t been a crisis in their family that had caused the divorce. As if he could handle it fine.

  Pam wondered if that was the truth, but didn’t dare ask. She was mortified enough that her nosiness had led to this confession.

  Dorothy however had taken Bruce’s announcement in stride. “You’re sure she’s not a lipstick lesbian?” Dorothy asked, seeming interested but not disapproving. Pam wasn’t even sure what that meant, but trust her mother to be up on all the latest terms.

  “We went through a period of wondering. Hoping, too, if I am honest. It’s not an easy situation to accept. She’s the real deal.” Bruce was calm about it.

  “When I was younger, there weren’t many women who dared to live an openly lesbian life,” Dorothy said, “Most were very secretive. A friend of mine was a lesbian, and I found out in a very shocking way.”

  Pam stared at her mother.

  Dorothy seemed to realize they might be assuming the wrong thing, for she continued. “Oh, nothing nasty. I happened to walk into a store and a natty, formally dressed man I passed on the way out was my friend in full drag. It was a stunner.”

  “You never told me that, Mom.”

  Dorothy gave Pam a sharp look. “You never asked if I knew any lesbians. You were too mealy-mouthed to talk of such things.”

  “I—well—I,” she tried to reply.

  Bruce came to her rescue. “It used to be a lot more under wraps, as I am sure you remember, Dorothy. Even in my generation, which Pam is probably at the tail end of, people didn’t talk about homosexuality when we were growing up.”

  Dorothy inclined her head in agreement. “Yes, that’s true. Ethel never even acknowledged to me that I had seen her dressed as a man. I never mentioned it, either. Of course by then we were both married. It hardly mattered to our friendship.”

  “She married?” Pam asked, surprised.

  “Of course. Most gays and lesbians through history have,” Dorothy said, as if it was a matter of common knowledge that Pam should have realized.

  “What about your friend’s husband?” Bruce asked.

  Dorothy replied, “I really have no idea. Ethel might not have known the truth about herself until after she became intimate with her husband. Young girls back then were not encouraged to discover their sexuality before they took the wedding vows.”

  “Good point,” Bruce said.

  “Wasn’t Cole Porter gay? And married? And his wife knew?” Pam threw in.

  “That’s fairly well established. The jury is still out on Cary Grant, though.” Bruce smiled.

  “The man married four times,” Dorothy said. “He must have wanted to be straight.”

  It sounded so strange to Pam to hear her mother use jargon. Especially when she herself didn’t feel comfortable with those terms.

  “Movie stars,” Dorothy harrumphed. “We’ve moved from a weighty modern issue to gossip.”

  Bruce shrugged his shoulders a little. “It helps to be reminded that having a gay daughter isn’t unusual.”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Dorothy averred staunchly. “She may provide you with some grandchildren yet. A daughter-in-law, too,” she added, ever the optimist.

  “Decent of you to say,” Bruce replied.

  They soon finished their lunch. Bruce thanked them and said he must get back to work.

  “I do have a deadline.” He made to pick up his dishes and bus them inside, but Dorothy waved him off.

  “Let us deal with the dishes, and you go on. Yappie’s afternoon walk will come soon enough.”

  After reiterating his thanks, he departed for his house. Pam started the cleanup. Dorothy did some, but then sat. Pam suspected that her mother’s thoughts had reverted to the long ago past and that friend who had a secret lesbian life. Ethel? Had she ever come to their home? Pam didn’t remember.

  Pam hadn’t thought much about such things. Dating boys had been difficult enough, with both her shyness and her boisterous, well-known mother as deterrents. Only when Pam went to college did she get out from under the oppressive public spotlight. There she met Jeff, who was perfect for her.

  That was over. She had decades yet to live. Would she follow Sarah’s advice and look for a new love? Or try to launch herself in a new direction? This charity idea was daunting and she’d hardly taken even the first step. What was wrong with her that she was frightened of making a few phone calls? Or writing a press release? How hard could they be?

  She’d start later today. Not the phone calls, but at least the press release. That didn’t require talking to anybody.

  By now she had the few dishes washed and drying in the rack she suspected her mother never used. Her mother preferred paper plates and plastic forks to washing anything. It was amazing that she had raised four children without any of them succumbing to malnutrition, obesity, or high blood pressure, considering how much takeout food they had eaten as children before the housekeeper was hired. Dorothy’s lack of interest in cooking healthy meals couldn’t have helped her father’s health, either, but she mustn’t blame her mother. They all knew Daddy smoked like a chimney and drank too many cocktails. He was a meat-and-potatoes man, too. No vegetables for him.

  It was a long time ago now. She still remembered going with her mother to pick Daddy up at the Long Island Railroad station, before they’d gotten a second car. How eager she had been to see her father emerge from the train, wearing a suit and a hat and carrying a trenchcoat and the newspaper. With a cigarette in his hand, of course. How she had run to him, and how he had caught her up in his arms and given her a kiss and hug. He’d say, “Who’s my best girl?” in that hearty voice of his.

  Oh, dear. As she stood in the pristine, seldom-used kitchen, the tears flowed down her cheeks. She hadn’t cried for her father in many years, although she had broken down in sobs for months after the surprise heart attack killed him. There hadn’t been enough time, time to say goodbye, time to get used to the idea that he would pass from her life.

  As with Jeff. It wasn’t fair. Mindful of her father’s early death, Pam had insisted that Jeff get regular yearly physicals. She had done her best to feed her family healthy meals. The fluctuating USDA guidelines had not helped, not that it had mattered. Jeff died from an unsuspected aneurism, something that only would have been picked up from a scan. The kind of scan he had never needed
because his doctor each year declared him healthy.

  She wiped the tears from under her eyes, thankful she had no mascara on, and hung up her dish towel. Enough of this. She would make a dent in the dining room piles. Her mother surely did not need so many newspaper or magazine back issues.

  #

  Dorothy was sitting outside. Her mind was on the past. How strange it had been to have recognized her dear friend, Ethel Bush, wearing a three-piece tailored man’s suit and a man’s hat. No makeup, of course. Although maybe there had been a hint of a five o’clock shadow? Perhaps some deliberate attempt to highlight hair on her upper lip?

  Back then, in the 1940s, men’s clothing had been as generous as it was again today. Men could hide their bodies in very loose pants, full shirts over undershirts, and wide-cut suit jackets. Then there were the hats. None of those little fedoras Frank Sinatra affected when he was balding. No, the hats in the 1940s had been big with wide brims. Men could hide under them. Women could bundle up their hair and conceal it under hats, too. It wasn’t unusual for a man to wear leather gloves in winter, either. The delicate fingers of a woman could be easily hidden in man’s gloves.

  Women’s clothing and makeup was frankly feminine back then. The makeup colors were very stark and red. Most women wore dresses and skirts, not slacks. Yes, of course, Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn had famously worn slacks in the 1930s. Some women had worn slacks to do their factory jobs during the war effort. Greta had. Most grown women didn’t wear slacks regularly until the skirts became immodest in the 1960s. Then, many women switched to slacks merely to look less old-fashioned while still retaining some coverage. The fashions were awful for a while. One couldn’t lean over or sit down safely in a skirt from 1966 on.

  Ah, but those were exciting times. It was more pleasant to think about them than to dwell on the distant past. She didn’t want to think about Ethel right now. Ethel was dead.

  She decided to get up and see what Pamela was doing. She found her daughter in the dining room, leafing through newspapers.

  “Hi, Mom,” Pamela looked up. “Do we need to keep any of these newspapers? Can we recycle them?”

  “Of course. I meant to put them out last week.”

  Pamela gave her an odd look, as if to say that these newspapers had been here for more than a week. She gathered a batch and headed for the kitchen door, calling over her shoulder. “Is there a recycle box, or do we have to bag or tie them?”

  “A blue box. It’s by the trash cans.”

  Dorothy leafed through the stacks of magazines. Some were as much as a year old. She’d gotten very behind. She looked at one or two, but nothing about them interested her. Why on earth was she keeping these?

  Pamela returned for a second batch of newspapers and noticed what Dorothy was doing.

  “Are you done with those magazines?”

  “Yes. I don’t know why they’ve been hanging around so long.”

  “Okay, I’ll grab them, too.” Pamela removed a stack.

  It was nice her daughter had the energy, because Dorothy didn’t right now. She wandered out to the sunroom again to look at the water. It was always full of motion.

  “Where’d you go?” her daughter called.

  “I’m out here,” she replied. Pamela came out to the sunroom with a stack of magazines. “How about these?”

  “What about them?”

  “May I recycle them?” Pamela’s tone of voice suggested she’d asked the question before. Perhaps she had. Dorothy was paying attention to watching the tide. She didn’t want to think about dealing with papers.

  “We can decide on that another day. I’m a little lacking in ambition right now.”

  #

  At least her mother had allowed her to toss several stacks of newspapers and magazines before telling her to leave the rest. Dorothy obviously tired much quicker these days, because there were telltale signs all over the house that she was not keeping up with her housekeeping. That was just an expression, as now that Dorothy no longer had a housekeeper, she had a regular cleaning service. The cleaners probably were responsible for the many stacks neatly piled on the dining room table.

  None of the papers or magazines looked as if they had been read. Maybe it was time to stop the newspapers, even though they were getting thinner anyway because advertising had fled to the Internet. Dorothy had devoured newspapers in previous years, searching for any little bit of information to help her current campaign, or spark a new one. There had been no end to the numbers and types of quests her mother signed up for and then pressed friends and acquaintances into joining. Pam always found it exhausting, but her mother had done a lot of good in the community. Pam was proud of her mother.

  As a child, Pam had wished Dorothy had had more time for her. Pam was the youngest of the four. She always suspected she was the afterthought, the unplanned baby no one was enthusiastic about having. She’d never asked her mother about it. When had they ever sat down just to talk? Dorothy was always busy, continuously in motion.

  In the old days, Dorothy was constantly on the phone, harassing and haranguing, or on her way to a meeting or protest. She’d organized and participated in numerous sit-ins. She routinely dragged all the kids, including Pam, to swell the numbers at protest marches. Daddy had to bail Dorothy out of jail several times. After he died, Alexander took over the bailing job. He even had a bail bond company on retainer at one time. Dorothy had been especially active in the 1970s and 1980s.

  Even their hobbies were dramatically different. Pam liked to sew, especially to crochet. Dorothy couldn’t bear to sit still long enough to do hand work. Did Dorothy even have a hobby, come to think of it? Oh, of course. Her crossword puzzles. She played with them during odd moments, but Dorothy’s real hobby was people. When they went out anywhere, she was hyper alert to the other people they encountered. She noticed if someone looked poor or unhappy. She was fearless about approaching them and asking if there was any way she could help. Many times, Dorothy had improved people’s lives.

  What was the story on the pile of mail? It ought to be dealt with. Maybe after a little while, she could suggest to Dorothy that they could add more to the recycling bin.

  Meanwhile, she would make a few homemade goodies for the leftovers picnic with the attractive man next door. She would have squirmed in mortification at the blatant matchmaking, but Dorothy’s forthright actions had embarrassed her many times in the past. She had grown a little numb to it. If Bruce made any moves, she’d deal with them. He probably would not, since he wouldn’t want to risk arousing Dorothy’s ire.

  She wondered if Bruce had a sweet tooth. It had been years since she’d made any cookies. Maybe she would tonight. It would be fun.

  #

  Bruce was pleased with his progress getting to know Dorothy Duncan. Meeting Pam was a bonus. Obviously, Dorothy was trying play matchmaker by sending them on a picnic, which in turn accelerated his neighborly relationship with Dorothy. He was excited about Pam for different reasons, though there was always the chance she knew something to help him move forward on his quest.

  Aunt Nora had sent him here, but he’d been the one to decide on the oblique approach. Although perhaps he needn’t have bothered. Dorothy seemed like a forthright old girl. Still, getting her to admit to murder would be an effort. She had to know there was no statute of limitations on the crime, if indeed a crime had been committed. He wanted her to let her guard down and confide in him. Then he’d know what to do.

  He was somewhat regretful his friendliness with the family would eventually be revealed as self-interest. But he was willing to take that rap to learn the truth.

  #

  Pam sat in the sunroom. She’d hauled out her crocheting, which she always found soothing. She had donated many blankets to charitable drives over the years. Dorothy had gone into her first-floor bedroom a half hour ago. It was a relief to be alone for a while. Pam wasn’t used to being with people constantly, at least, not at home.

  Dorothy c
ame out of her bedroom and walked over to the sunroom. She held a framed photo, which she looked at searchingly in the strong light.

  Neither of them said anything for a while. Dorothy looked at the photo over and over, sometimes touching the glass as if to caress the face of the woman in the picture, sometimes staring at it. Pam didn’t recall ever seeing that photo around the house before. Finally, her curiosity overcame her desire for peace and quiet.

  “Who’s that?”

  “My oldest friend, Greta. You never met her. We volunteered at the same USO canteen.”

  “The USO? That was the organization that entertained servicemen during the war, right? I didn’t know you ever did anything like that. Wasn’t it kind of creepy, dancing with all those men you didn’t know?”

  Dorothy smiled, remembering. “It was considered a bit fast of a girl to dance with strangers, but also patriotic. I enjoyed it. They were flattering, eager. I even kissed my share of them.”

  “Really?”

  “That was nothing. We got marriage proposals. Back then, most boys would have been ashamed to ask a decent girl for relations unless there was marriage involved. Some of them would soon die in combat and this was their last chance to touch or kiss a girl. We all knew it could happen to this boy or that boy. Would happen. Some girls married soldiers they hardly knew.”

  “I’ve heard about wartime marriages. Don’t they mostly fail?”

  “Perhaps that was why the military rules made it hard for soldiers to spontaneously marry, because the boys were fueled by alcohol, lust, and fear of dying. Yet despite the obstacles, many couples found a way.”

  “Marrying a boy you’d merely danced with a couple of times sounds like a recipe for disaster. Did you know anyone who did that?”

  “Greta. She married Roger Dietrich after they met at a USO dance early in the war. He was shipped overseas and didn’t come back ’til after the war was over.”

  “Did their marriage break up once they got to know each other?”