Club Sandwich (2 page)

“This is a John Birch church,” Betty Christopher said when the pastor suggested maybe congregants advanced matters toward the extreme. And believe me, if my pastor, who considered
left
a four-letter word, supposed things went too far, they really had slid right off the edge of the rational world. We resided in suburban Baltimore, for heaven’s sake, in a blue-collar neighborhood of people who worked hard and merely wanted to abide in peace. Well, Betty eventually left the church, taking others with her, because that unknown change agent had worked his magic on our ideology. She dubbed us members of the vast left-wing conspiracy, members of
the aforementioned Trilateral Commission who also secreted pink cards in our wallets and pocketbooks.

Mom didn’t cry about it. “Good riddance. She was nothing but a troublemaker anyway. What a paranoid.”

I can happily report Mom calmed down eventually. In fact, she’s perfectly lovely and serene and rests in a much stronger, more normal faith these days. My personal theory? The whole thing tired her out, and she believes she paid her dues in full. She’s right. I paid mine by the time I was fifteen, when I picketed an abortion clinic out on Bel Air Road and was declared a particularly foul name for a female dog by a passerby. On that freezing cold Saturday morning, the wind swung down the street with such force it immediately froze my hands to the picket-sign post. Hardly a great reward after giving myself a stiletto-sized splinter while making my sign. The only consolation any of us has on the matter is that at least the babies live with Jesus now. I guess in heaven nobody’s considered an inconvenience.

I have to give my pastor credit, though. He loved us kids. In fact, during church picnics at Muddy Run Park, it was my pastor who swam with us, let us dunk him, and threw us high in the air so we could flip, dive, and cannonball ourselves into exhaustion.

Okay, time to stop the mental rumination before the snooze alarm goes off again. I slide the lever of the clock before it bleeps, pick up the bedside phone, and call Mom.

“Hello, dear!”

Her voice comforts more than a down quilt.

“Hi Mom. Have a good night?”

“Fine. Your brother brought me up some dinner, some kind of baked flounder. I always sleep well after fish.”

She’s always so happy to hear from me. I’m one of the few weird
women who actually like being with her mom. I extend all the credit to her. I was a mouthy brat between ages thirteen and sixteen. She persevered. That’s Mom, though.

“Good. Can I drop Trixie off a little early this morning?”

“Of course, dear. Why?”

“Persy cut his hair last night, and I want to get him to the barber before school.”

“How bad is it?”

“Let’s just put it this way: his bangs look like Milton Berle took a bite out of them.”

I wanted to say Steven Tyler, but Mom’s no Aerosmith fan.

“Oh my. I think every little boy does it at least once.”

“This is the eighth time, Mom.”

“Eighth? Are you sure?”

“That isn’t something a mother forgets.”

“My goodness. You’ll have to start hiding the scissors.”

“I’ve been hiding the scissors. He did it with his bowie knife.”

“Oh my!” She laughs. Low and a bit scratchy. Mom had thyroid cancer at the untested age of twenty-one. They scraped her vocal cords to make sure they’d removed it all.

“Better go wake them up. Love you, dear.”

“I love you too. Oh wait—bring Trixie in her pajamas. I bought the cutest little outfit for her the other day at the Hecht Company.”

Of course, they started calling it plain-old
Hecht’s
years ago. Mom takes a while to align her vernacular with the times.

I possess a fantasy. Ad gurus love to think they know about a woman’s fantasies. Of course, theirs involve strawberries, silk scarves,
and sweat. I fantasize about marriage to a man who says bedtime prayers with the kids so I can take a nice hot bath.

That’s about it.

The day I walked in the March for Victory, my Easter outfit hugged my skinny body. Well, it was the seventies. While millions (or so they say) of students protested the Vietnam War, our church group marched down the streets of Philadelphia in support of the troops. I held one end of a banner for WTOW, a religious AM radio station, feeling pretty darned important, not to mention stylish, in my navy polyester-knit dress and coat with white buttons and a patent-leather belt. The white vinyl knee-high go-go boots positively puffed me proud.

I don’t regret those times of my childhood. My friends and I thought such activities more fun than the Professor Kool show on channel 2. Which, to be honest, I actually didn’t care for. But I was realistic enough to know the general population frowned on our cause. And to this day, other than my best friend, Lou, and the kids I churched around with, I know no other children who participate in marches, then or now. I still support the troops, by the way.

So here: if you’re looking for a story about someone who grew up in extreme conservatism and ended up a liberal or, God help me, a moderate, shut the book now. I am who I am, and if you can’t read about somebody who thinks different than you, you’re not the liberal you think. Conversely, if you’re reading this for affirmation, go read something by Dave Eggers or Gore Vidal, then think for yourself. But by all means, finish this book, then go tell your friends to buy a copy because, as you’ll see, I need the cash more than ever.

Money is why I still write a column for our local paper, a strip of rhetoric dedicated to the proposition that there isn’t a person alive I cannot anger or offend. It lets me do the blabbering for a change, instead of those annoying Hollywood types who live in mansions and have garages full of Bentleys, closets full of Prada originals, boxes full of Harry Winston jewels, and noses full of high-grade cocaine. Who are they to talk about social justice because they gave ten grand to the Democratic gubernatorial candidate? (Which, in truth, would be the same as me sending in a check for ten bucks.)

The newspaper columnist in me explains my verbose asides. Believe it or not, I don’t always write about national and local politics in my column. Sometimes I write about domestic—as in behind the front door of your house—politics.

Today I will write about making lemonade out of lemons. I have coronated myself the empress of lemonade-making. I pride myself on my lemonade. I mean, when you’re married to a man who’s gone eighty percent of the time and you’re still together, that’s lemonade. That might even qualify as hard lemonade.

All part of womanhood.

Oh sure, the activists tell me we’ve advanced miles and miles. But nobody’s gained more from our liberation than men. Now, not only do they have less responsibility for the household budget, they can get sex more easily before a household even exists. And even most of the married ones don’t lift a finger at home. Who packs the lunches, helps with homework, makes sure somebody’s home for the cable man? We do, that’s who.

Let me tell you, there’s not a man alive, other than single or stay-at-home dads, who have a clue whether there’s enough clean underwear in the kids’ drawers for tomorrow. If I’m wrong, I’ll be the first one to applaud.

Now, I may be mistaken, but I don’t expect even the Jesus my old church worshiped would leave all the vacuuming to one person, or that He’d push back from the supper table and hop right on His computer.

It’s not that I don’t like men. I love men. I just think we women have created monsters and then blamed the monsters. It’s time now to liberate the men, to teach them not to merely view us as equals, but to raise us up on the pedestals we deserve, to adore us, to admire us, and at the very least do fifty percent of the housework without our having to ask. Shoot, even dishes three nights a week would be nice. Straightening the den now and again? Putting a new roll on the toilet paper holder? Okay, putting the cap back on the toothpaste! How about that?

I’m a little mad right now. I haven’t heard from my husband, Rusty, in three days. Granted he’s busy singing tenor for a traveling gospel barbershop quartet, Heavenly Harmonies, but would it be so hard to turn on the blinkin’ cell phone before the concert begins and just say hi?

Frankly, I’ll take anger over fear any day. At least anger buffs you up.

Lemons out of lemonade. Hmm. Well, let’s see now. Three days incommunicado may just equal that new light fixture I want for the front porch. Oh yeah. Drink up, Rusty. I just won this one.

God, I’d hate myself to really think of that as a victory. I never for a moment imagined this life. Just bedtime prayers and a bath.

It’s 5:00 a.m. I fire up my computer, Old Barbara by name, and set out to write my column. We women must learn the art of the deal and utilize it whenever possible. Especially with our kids. I’m doing all I can to spread the word.

Don’t let me fool you. Yeah, I sound like I’m all that, but if any
of them saw how my sons hair turned out at the barber’s yesterday, they’d see me for the freak I really am! Trixie, in her smart new Hecht’s romper, did nothing but point and laugh at her brother all the way home, and soft-hearted me decided to show her, and I let Persy eat chocolate-chip cookies for dinner while she ate spinach and dried-out chicken breast.

She kicked up such a fuss I swear fresh vocal nodules accompanied her to bed.

Y
oung, pregnant movie stars always tear at the lining of my heart. Their taut bellies contrast with their tight butts like a splash of red paint on a black canvas. They don’t seem to know what the rest of us know: that they inhabit an Alpo world and that someday so many bites will be chewed from them, their marriage, their families, and even their own self-awareness. They’ll retreat to their Hollywood Hills homes, spinning down to L.A. only for plastic surgery. Martinis, muumuus, and pool boys will frame their days.

It’s why I love to hear about a solid Hollywood marriage. I want to stand up and yell, “Hooray for you! You did it, darn it! You did it.”

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward come to mind. Paul and Lynda McCartney, too.

I should’ve married a guy named Paul.

I’ll never forget the face of the young guy who was first to
ma’am
me. What started out as a typical convenience-store jaunt landed me in a rite of passage. Only twenty-five at the time, I thought my khaki shorts and camp shirt youthful enough. No crow’s-feet then, no dark circles or bony knuckles, no drooping triceps. No baby straddled my hip that day. And this
boy
, probably at least twenty-one years old, separated me socially from himself with nary a beat.
Did he possibly realize the import of his words? Did he understand that in proclaiming me one of “them,” he stripped away all my excuses? Well, it’s been downhill ever since. And each year I live engraves two years upon my face.

Never more aware of that than tonight, I ready myself for my twentieth high-school reunion. Now, the ten-year reunion means nothing. Still babies then. Late twenties? Pah. Sure, the expectation to achieve some measure of responsibility followed us into the school gym. Maybe a kid or two. A barely established career. Or if not a career, serious grad school rated acceptable. I measured up fine then with a husband and one child. I helped Mom and Grandpa run a successful if homey restaurant, and Rusty not only looked handsome, he enjoyed a good job as the music director of a hoity-toity United Methodist church down on Charles Street. Hardly rich and living out in the county, we nevertheless enjoyed our life in a city apartment near church, paid off our car two years early, and ate sushi every Friday night. An exciting city life, strolling around Hopkins U. in the evenings, playing tennis on the lighted courts with bright-eyed baby Lyra looking on from her car seat. The fact that she turned fourteen last year makes me ill.