Her Mother's Daughter (108 page)

Drive three miles to house on Old Hodge's Road, get out of car, lift out packages (if applicable), see that child has books and gear. (Variation in snowy weather: mutter self-reminders to sand or salt walk), enter house, remove outer clothes, help child remove outer clothes, offer child cookies and milk. Sit with child, ask about her day. SMILE.

Agree to let child go to play with friend, send her up to change clothes. Spread textbooks out on dining table, complete homework. Time allotted to this task varies from none (worst case) to one and a half hours (best case) according to Variations (see above). During this period, older children appear. Hour of appearance varies enormously, as does mood of children. Sometimes books thrown down, doors slammed, voices raised; at other times, smiles, good-natured offers of help. But invariably at some point in this period, argument arises between at least one child and another, one child and parent.

Two nights a week: At 5:15, start to prepare evening meal. Since this must be ready by 5:45, preparations are hasty, meals simple. Best case: leftovers. Small child returns home at 5:30, sits down to eat with mother. Older children may or may not join them. If not, they will prepare their own food, or heat it up later. Gulp down food. Clean away dishes, put in sink, yell at older child for not having yet washed breakfast dishes. At 6:05, prepare to leave: instruct small child to do homework, call out to older children with instructions, run to toilet, reapply lipstick, comb hair, put on coat, boots, gloves, place books in canvas bag, kiss small child,
leave house by 6:15.
Drive twenty miles to local college, park in huge parking field, walk half a mile to classroom, enter, remove coat, sit, chat briefly with acquaintances, bell rings, instructor appears, class begins. Sit nervously in class, unsure French verbs generals battles properties of one-celled animals properly memorized, very nervous when instructor gives quiz, gratified no deeply relieved when quiz papers returned with grade over 85. At 8:20 bell rings: put on coat and gloves, walk to building three hundred yards away, enter, go to classroom, repeat above.

9:50. Leave building with other students but do not stand and chat with them. Walk more than half a mile back to car, enter. (Variation in snowy weather: clean off car windows with scraper first.) Drive twenty miles to house on Old Hodge's Lane. Leave car, locking it; enter house. Pray that all is well there: no arguments, homework done, chores done, children smiling. Prayers rarely answered. Situations often must be dealt with. No capacity left to SMILE. As soon as possible, undress, throw clothes on chair, fall on bed, SLEEP.

Three nights a week: Same as above except meal may take somewhat longer to prepare, and after dinner, books taken up to bedroom where sound of television is muted, and homework done there. Many interruptions by children, a long one overseeing small child in bath and to bed.

Weekends: Rise at 6:00 or 6:30 out of habit. But a luxurious cup of coffee at table, sometimes accompanied by a cigarette. Ease and quiet, ability to set own schedule marred only by intermittent but regular presence of (always) noisy (often) wrangling, complaining, weeping, angry children.

In variables: Bank: cash check; major marketing; cooking of roast to produce leftovers for week; taking clothes to dry cleaner, picking them up; children requiring livery service to wide variety of sites; homework, homework, homework.

Variables: Shopping for necessary clothes or school supplies for children; shopping for birthdays, Christmas, other occasions when gifts required; medical or dental appointments; crises, internal (child has accident, requires hospital care; child falls ill, requires tending; parent falls ill, throwing entire household into confusion; car trouble: see notes) or external (friend calls weeping, requires consolation; friend falls ill, requires assistance; friend rarely seen calls, requiring long telephone conversation). Other: friend or relative drops in; parties or dinners on Saturday night: attended, never given.

“Let's have that drink,” Anastasia says. She thinks but does not say: Her life is worse than Mother's was.

They have moved to the living room, where they sit on love seats placed opposite to each other. Joy is less tense, the weariness around her eyes has relaxed a little. Anastasia is warmer. She can ask now, in an easy way, without sounding judgmental or prying, “So what is it, Joy, what's going on with Justin?”

And Joy can answer, without brittleness or anger, “Oh, god. I don't know, An.”

Anastasia watches her for a few minutes. “Are things very bad?” she asks finally.

Joy sighs. “Pretty bad.” Her head comes up. “I don't want Mother to know.”

“Why?”

Joy's mouth hardens. “I just don't! I don't know why, I just don't!” Her eyes are glistening.

“She knows something….”

Eyes flare with alarm. “What did she say?”

“Oh…not much. She was putting out feelers to see if I knew anything.” Anastasia's tone is guarded, she is being careful about what she is saying. “Just that you look tired, that it was strange that Justin went back to Texas so soon last Christmas, that she's worried about you.”

“
I don't want her to know!”

“I won't say anything.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Joy looks around, finds a crumpled pack of Camel's. “Can I bum a cigarette?”

Anastasia hands her one, she lights it nervously. She blows out smoke and begins to scratch her hand. Her thumb is red and raw. “It was true, what I told everybody when I first came back to Long Island—I did want the kids to have a real home, I wanted a permanent home too after all those years of moving, moving…. And I didn't want to live in Texas. I don't know a soul in Texas, I wanted to be near my family, my old friends, not that many of them are left…. But I do see Kitty occasionally, and Penny Dyckman—you remember her, Penny Swope—she lives near here, in Old Westbury…. And Justin was only going to be in Texas for three years.

“I talked about it for a long time, he got sick of hearing it, he finally said okay, go ahead, but he wanted me to settle in Washington because he figured he was in line for a post there, he had some inkling they were going to assign him to a high-level job in the Pentagon….But I don't know anybody in Washington except some Army wives I knew in Germany or the Philippines, whose husbands are assigned there now, and I don't like them, I didn't want to be with them, I
hate
them, I
hate
the Army!” Her eyes fill.

“He still isn't sure that's going to happen, he won't know for another few months. Anyway, the understanding was I'd come here and settle and he'd come up whenever he could and then if he was assigned to Washington, he'd commute, he could drive or fly easily between here and there, it would be fine and I said it was about time I had my way about something, for fifteen years I moved and moved and dragged the kids around and I'm
sick
of it!
Sick
of it!” Her eyes fill again and she inhales deeply, leaning her head back against the couch.

“I suppose I'm wrong. Justin's mother, Amy—you know how I loved her….” Tears appeared again. “Awful to say, but I loved her more than I loved my own. Well, in some ways. She's been so kind to me. Well, he must have told her something because she flew out here last month, she said she wanted to get out of Iowa in January,” Joy laughs, “but what she really wanted was to teach me how to be a proper wife. She kept talking about it—you know, what wives have to put up with, it's the nature of the job, she says. She does have a firm character, she's great…. And how Army wives have to be especially dedicated and oh all that garbage I can't stand it I could care less I have to have some life of my own or I'll go crazy! Those women, those Army wives, all they do is play cards and drink, drink, drink, half of them are alcoholics, well you can see why, they can never do anything of their own, they start and get settled and then boom! they're moved halfway around the world. I just couldn't stand it anymore!” Joy stares straight ahead.

“I completely sympathize, Joy.”

Joy shifts her eyes to her sister.

“You know I do, know I would. I couldn't stand being someone's wife as an occupation even
without
moving around.”

Joy expels a forced hard laugh, “That's true!” She sips the last drops of her drink. “Maybe I am weak or selfish or whatever. Maybe I don't have a great character. But you know I just can't worry about that anymore, I can't stand that life….”

“I understand. So Justin's angry?”

“Angry!” She leans back tiredly. “He's in a rage! Well, you know, he came at Christmas….”

“Yes. He seemed strange.”

“Well, he was already angry—at my moving here without him. But, you know, he's so unfair.
He
goes off for months at a time. If I'd stayed in Texas with him, he wouldn't have been home for Christmas—last year, I mean—because he was on a secret assignment, I think he was in Iran, because he sent me that vase as a Christmas present when he came back,” Joy nods toward an exquisite Persian vase sitting on one of the Korean chests, “and when he came up at Christmas, we were arguing, and he said something about Moslem women and how they're kept in line, it sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, as if he'd seen something….

“Anyway, the kids were supposed to go down and visit him over the summer, but he had no place to put them up, so in the end we decided he'd come up the following Christmas, this past Christmas.

“And I don't know…maybe it was because he was angry with me…or maybe it was because…you know, every other place we've lived has been for him, around him…you know Army housing, usually right on a base. We were surrounded by Army, everything was Army…so in a way, wherever we lived, the house, the surroundings, it's all been his turf, sort of….

“But this house wasn't. Isn't. It's
mine.
I mean, he paid for it but
I feel
it's my house. I bought it, I've arranged it…well, not around
him.
He wasn't here. So I arranged it for
us,
for our comfort, our pleasure, the kids and me. And when he walked in the door last Christmas, he looked all wrong in this house. He just
did.
Well, I thought he did. I couldn't help it, that's how I felt. He
looked
wrong and he
acted
wrong. The way he walked, I mean. I couldn't help it, he looked so ridiculous the way he walked, like an automaton…ordinary people don't look like that. When you're on an Army base, you don't think anything of it, everybody walks like that, but in a real house it looks so strange. Have you ever noticed the way Justin walks? Does it seem strange to you?” Joy appeals to her sister.

Anastasia keeps her face as expressionless as possible. A fight isn't a separation, a separation isn't a divorce. “Well,” she temporizes, “he's a soldier, of course….”

“And the way he talked. I'd got out of the habit of hearing him. He doesn't talk, he
barks.
Barks orders at the kids, at me. Like he's talking to his men. Subordinates. And it made me dizzy. I couldn't look at him, I couldn't talk to him, I just felt dizzy, faint, all the time. I couldn't eat. I'd forgotten what mealtimes were like, the silence, because he never let the kids talk at the table, so mealtimes are silent, so silent, all you could hear was his chewing…oh, I couldn't stand his chewing, chomp, chomp, so
thorough,
a couple of times I just got up and ran upstairs, I couldn't sit there….” Her hands are at her sides, lying on the couch, clenched and white.

“So…he could tell something was wrong. Well!” she hoots, “it was pretty obvious! I couldn't sleep with him either, I said he snored, I went and slept with Jenny, we slept with our arms around each other…. So of course he was furious. And I didn't know what to say. I mean, I didn't want my marriage to break up! How would I manage? And I didn't want to be a divorced woman, it's…oh, I'm sorry, An, but it still seems terrible to me, divorce.”

“You were aghast when Brad and I divorced.”

“Yes, I guess I was.” Reluctantly. “I guess I wasn't much help to you. But I couldn't understand it. Brad was such a doll.”

“In your eyes. He liked you. He always flirted with you.”

Joy bristles. “I don't know about flirting, but he was always nice to me. But I know you never know the truth about people, how they are with their kids, their wives…” She moves her hands, uses one to scratch the other. Her red thumb blooms redder. “But I
couldn't,
I just
couldn't
go on living with him. There was no way. I couldn't stand anything about him. The way he talks, those chopped phrases, all the numbers, he's always talking about numbers…. I felt he was a robot, sex was like sleeping with a robot with moving parts….”

Anastasia reaches across the cocktail table and picks up her sister's glass, cocks an eyebrow. Joy rises too, nodding. The sisters move toward the kitchen, Joy still talking.

“What I really want…well, of course it's impossible, I know that, so I couldn't do or say anything, I couldn't propose any arrangement because the only thing I want is to stay married but not live together, to have him go on supporting us, but never see him.” She explodes with laughter. “Crazy, huh?”

They reach the kitchen, Joy fetches ice and begins to refresh their drinks. Anastasia sits on the stool.

She sighs. “You're constantly blaming yourself or defending yourself. As if you were required to do all the bending—which I guess women are. But the situation is simple enough. You don't want to live with Justin anymore, you find him intolerable as a husband and as a father. But you know that once men get divorced they don't support their kids, and you know
you
can't, and so you are paralyzed, you don't know what is the best thing to do. If you were alone, if you didn't have kids to take care of, you'd just leave.”