"Eric knows both numbers. Unless he's buried under an avalanche somewhere." David and I looked to Mrs. Woodbury, who was staring at her half sandwich, to see if Laura Lee's words had registered. I asked if something was wrong.
"She hates mayonnaise," said Laura Lee.
I said, "You could have told me."
"I forgot. The nurse mentioned it in passing once. I've got a lot more on my mind than your friend's eating habits, Frederica. Such as: Where is you-know-who and why hasn't he called?"
My father took a handful of potato chips from the cut-glass bowl I'd chosen and dropped them onto Mrs. Woodbury's plate. She smiled.
"Help her," said Laura Lee.
"Let her try," said my father.
The phone rang, causing all of us except Mrs. Woodbury to jump. Laura Lee picked it up in midring and gasped, "Eric?" Her face sagged instantly. Without a word, she handed the phone to my father.
"Eric?" said Mrs. Woodbury.
"No," said Laura Lee bitterly. "It's not Eric. Eric either doesn't want to call or can't call because he's stranded in his car. Or stuck in a snowbank with amnesia. It's David's wife, Aviva."
"My mother," I explained to Mrs. Woodbury, jabbing myself in the breastbone, happy to use a noun I thought she'd understand.
My father was saying into the phone, "Okay, we'll turn it on. Thanks, hon," prompting Laura Lee to mimic his "Thanks, hon" derisively.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"I assume so. She said we should turn on the TV."
"Why?" Laura Lee cried. "Was there a horrible accident?" My father said calmly, "Traffic has come to a dead halt on 128. The cars can't move. The drivers are abandoning them."
"Where's 128?"
"It's a big circle around the city, south to, I'm guessing, Brain-tree or thereabouts, and north through the western—"
"Would he have taken it?"
My father hesitated, looked at me. I said, "It's possible. He'd get off at Route 9—"
Laura Lee ran out of the room, hand over her mouth. In a few seconds, we could hear television voices fractured by the flipping of channels.
"Eric?" said Mrs. Woodbury.
My father said, "No. Eric's not home. Those voices you hear are on television. They're anchormen."
I said to my father, "Do you really think she understands 'anchormen'?"
"It's possible. I'm sure there's a TV in her room."
I said, "If Dr. Woodbury's car got stuck, don't you think he could have gone to the nearest house and asked to use their phone?"
"Not every family operates like ours does," he said. He wiped his mouth with the monogrammed napkin I'd found in the sideboard, and said, "Please excuse me."
Mrs. Woodbury's gaze followed David's exit. "As soon as I finish my sandwich, we'll go watch television, too," I told her.
"
Sesame?
" she asked.
I said, "I don't think
Sesame
is on now. They're watching the news. Because the snow is really bad. I mean—you can't see a foot in front of you."
She watched me eat. I picked up a chip and crunched it instructively. She pinched one of hers, opened her mouth, and pushed the chip in the generally correct direction.
"Excellent!" I said.
She crushed another into her mouth and then another. "Not so fast," I said. "Chew it and then you can swallow." I demonstrated, more athletic chewing in exaggerated fashion. From two rooms away, reporters were throwing out, "State of emergency ... Record
high tides ... Record low barometric pressure ... Cars marooned on Route 128," which incited an agitated discussion between David and Laura Lee that I couldn't quite make out. Mrs. Woodbury said again, "
Sesame?
"
I asked if she liked
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
as well. She nodded enthusiastically. I said, "Some people think he's gay, but I don't. Do you?"
My father strode into the room and headed for the phone. I asked him if anyone knew what time Dr. Woodbury's meeting had been in Providence.
"It was a lunch meeting ... maybe one-ish?"
"Where exactly?"
"Laura Lee doesn't know."
I said, "Bunny would know, Dad. Call her at home."
He left with the phone and its mile-long cord, and I returned to our enculturation. "Do you like President Carter?" I asked her. No answer. "Do you identify with Rosalynn? I mean, as a fellow First Lady?" Mrs. Woodbury smiled, missing eye contact by a few place settings. "Are you interested in politics?"
When she didn't answer, I said, "Did you watch the Watergate hearings?"
She said, "Water?"
"We had a party the night Tricky Dick resigned. Chili and corn-bread? Do you like chili?"
She nodded, frowning.
"Not so much?" I asked.
She did a little pantomime, pointing out the window, then hugged herself in an approximation of a shiver. "Chilly," she explained.
I said, "Well, close enough. That's a homonym. 'Chili' and 'chilly.' Very good." This was getting less interesting, reminding me of how tedious I found babysitting. I said, "Excuse me for a minute. I'm just going to check on those other people. You'll still be able to see me, okay? My name is Frederica. Can you say 'Freddy'?"
"Freddy," she repeated.
I walked the few steps into the foyer at the same moment Laura Lee ran past me and bounded up the stairs. My father appeared, not to follow but to scowl in her wake. "Bad news?" I asked.
"I reached Bunny. She
did
know where Eric's meeting was."
"Where?"
"An alum's house. It was a fundraiser. He ignored the forecast because the woman, apparently, was dangling an endowed chair in front of him."
"What time did he leave Rhode Island?"
"He didn't. The hostess convinced Eric that he shouldn't risk the drive back home. He's there. Safe and sound. Guest of honor."
"Did you talk to him?"
"We didn't call there. He notified Bunny, who didn't think it necessary to inform anyone else, such as..." He tipped his head in the direction of the stairs.
I asked, "Do you think someone should go up there?"
"To say what? 'At least we know he's safe and sound even if he's a selfish bastard'?"
"I know! Who did he think was going to take care of his wife?"
"I suspect he thought Bunny would arrange for coverage, or that the nurse would stay."
"Did you say anything to Bunny?"
"Such as?"
"Such as: 'You should be fired for desertion.'"
He laughed, an exhausted paternal laugh, then added wearily, "Bunny knows we fight hard so that the staff doesn't have to perform work outside their job description."
I said, "Dad! It's a state of emergency. Is babysitting the president's wife in
your
job description?"
We both, automatically, turned to peer into the dining room to check on our charge. She was again staring at her tuna fish sandwich as if it were a frog she'd been instructed to dissect. My father called, "Grace, don't worry. You don't have to eat that. Look: Frederica will take it away."
I asked my father, "Do you think she can hear okay?"
We had our answer immediately, as Laura Lee shrieked from above, presumably into a telephone, causing Mrs. Woodbury to flinch.
"Do you have any idea what you've put me through?" we heard.
Mrs. Woodbury said, "Mummy?"
We returned to our seats at the table. My father said, "No, hon. That's Laura Lee, upstairs on the phone. Remember she was eating with us, and dialing the telephone?"
Mrs. Woodbury said, "Okay."
I asked, "Do you think she said 'Mummy' because she was raised by a mother who yelled and screamed a lot?"
"Good question. My guess would be yes."
From above we heard, "But—" and "but—" again after what must have been a rant at the other end, followed by the slam of the phone accompanied by the loud sobbing of someone trying to be heard in the next room.
"Maybe you should go up there, Dad," I tried again.
David Hatch then muttered something that I'd never heard him say in my seventeen years as his daughter and as a front-row witness to his housefathering: "Let her cry."
We might have let her cry if the racket hadn't set Mrs. Woodbury to wailing. I said, "Someone has to tell Laura Lee to shut up or cry in private."
"If only Aviva could be here," my father said. "I hate to put you in this position ... so much responsibility. It isn't fair."
I said, "We can handle it. You've got a Ph.D. in psychology." I smiled. "And I have ice cream."
Mrs. Woodbury's crying changed to an interrogatory whimper.
"Would that make you feel better?" I asked her.
Laura Lee must have given up on the prospect of our rushing to her psychiatric aid, because we could hear her descending the stairs miserably. She joined us at the table, whipped the air with her napkin before smoothing it onto her lap, then asked, "Does anyone want to know what that was about?"
"I think we can guess," said my father.
Chin trembling, she said, "I called Eric at that alum's house and told the woman who answered the phone that I was calling about Mrs. Woodbury. Or maybe I said I
was
Mrs. Woodbury. I forget. When he came to the phone, I said, 'How dare you leave me alone with your helpless wife?' And do you know what outrageous thing he said to me?" She touched her chest with a splayed hand and coughed out a sob. "That he would pay me time and a half for the hours I covered for the nurse!"
My father said, "Time and a half? To a salaried employee?"
Laura Lee closed her eyes, inhaled, exhaled, opened her eyes. "Frederica? Could you tell your father that he has, characteristically, missed the point by a mile?"
I said, "You tell him. I promised to get Grace some ice cream."
"She's going to get as big as a house before this is all over."
"So what? It makes her happy. It's not like she's going to star in
The Nutcracker
next Christmas."
Laura Lee reached over, helped herself to Mrs. Woodbury's untouched sandwich, and took a large bite. "If it weren't for this child I'm carrying, I wouldn't want to eat anymore. Or live! I have no one. Eric said he didn't want me to be here when he got home. And you know what I said? I said, 'This is the president's home, and you won't
be
the president of Dewing College when I go public.'"
"Were you serious?" asked my father.
"Who doesn't already know?" I asked. "Everyone on campus does."
"
The Boston Globe
?" she said smartly. "
The New York Times
?
The Chronicle of Higher Ed
?"
"Going public would only hurt the college," said my father. "Good," said Laura Lee.
"And my parents," I added. "Who have been unbelievably nice to you."
"So? If the college folds, you'd get to live in a house and have a normal childhood instead of being a teenage housemother."
My father said, "I've had enough! You're not to speak to my daughter in that tone of voice again. Ever."
Mrs. Woodbury resumed her crying. Laura Lee joined in. The record-breaking wind howled. The lights flickered, inside and out, but recovered.
"Thanks, Dad," I said. And meant it.
N
O ONE HAD EVER SEEN
snow like this. "As emphatically as I can possibly state it, all people are to remain in their homes. Virtually every roadway in the state is impassable," pleaded Governor Michael Dukakis from the TV screen. My new best friend, Gracie Woodbury, I learned, could wash dishes if there were bubbles to entertain her and if I didn't mind a little breakage. Some part of her brain remembered how to polish furniture, a make-work activity that kept her busy as long as she had a soft rag in her hand and me to point her toward another breakfront. Soon I came to recognize the crossed legs and sashay that meant she had to pee. Except for the occasional crying jag, prompted by loud noises and family photographs, she was easy, sweet, manageable.
Laura Lee was ostentatiously useless, alternately pleading morning sickness, heartbreak, relocation, and revenge. On day two, prompted by nothing more than Aviva using the words "cabin fever" to describe the state of her boarders, Laura Lee declared that Tibbets Hall needed her. My well-meaning mother, she informed me, didn't understand that population. They were individualists, at least by Dewing standards. They were sensitive, despite their hard outer shells. Some danced. She had to go to them.
I expected my father to argue, to block the door, to hang onto her wrist as she set forth into the storm. Instead, he swept his arm and bowed in a grand gesture of chivalry. "Be my guest," he said. "Good-bye and good luck." Laura Lee performed an about-face, marched up the stairs, then marched back down wearing her raccoon coat, high-heeled green suede boots, and a jaunty burnt orange beret that barely covered the tips of her ears. She grabbed the knob of the front door with both hands and pulled. A gust of snow blew into the house as if it had a generator behind it. "Close it," I yelled. "Get back in. You can't go out in that."
She closed the door and leaned heavily against it, breathing hard. "I'll get an umbrella," she panted.
Behind us, sitting and watching from the stairway, my father said, "Don't be melodramatic, Laura Lee. If you went out in that and the wind blew you over, we wouldn't find you until spring."
"I'll go mad if I stay here!" she cried.
I said, "Would you let one of your girls go out in this? What if all of them were acting like this?
Let me out! Let me out!
We'd have to pad the walls."
"This is a state of emergency," my father said calmly. "You have to get a grip."
"It's too much," she said. "Too much."
"What is?" asked my father. "Too much snow? Or too many level heads?"
Laura Lee pulled off her beret with a jerk and sent it sailing into my father's chest. "You want to know what's too much? How's this, David? I'm with child by a man who doesn't want it and has seized that as a reason to send me away. On the heels of that, I get this natural disaster, which couldn't have happened at a worse time. The real tragedy is that if Eric could be here, we'd have had this private time in this cocoon"—she swept the room with an open arm—"in this beautiful house, fires in the fireplaces, the two of us alone to work things out. But what happens instead? This ridiculous storm with no end in sight! I can't leave. He can't get home. And what do I have for company? My lover's loony wife."