Jess said nothing. Be nice, she thought. Try to smile. Be gracious. Don’t fight.
“And you like the bubbles,” Art said, snuggling up to Sherry Hasek.
Jess wondered what her mother would have said. White wine maybe, because it was clear, direct, and to the point. Or maybe cream soda because it was sweet, pretty, and laced with nostalgia. Or maybe even milk, for the same reasons her father liked beer.
“Earth to Jess,” Barry was saying again. “Earth to Jess. Come in, Jess.”
“The first time was cute, Barry,” Jess said, more sharply than she’d intended. “Now, it’s merely tiresome.”
“So is your behavior. I’m just trying to figure out whether you’re simply preoccupied or whether you’re being deliberately rude.”
“Barry …” Maureen warned.
“Why on earth would I be deliberately rude?” Jess demanded.
“You tell me. I don’t profess to have any understanding into what you’re all about.”
“Is that so?”
“Jess …” her father said.
“I’d say we understand each other pretty well, Barry,” Jess told him, her patience evaporated. “We hate each other’s guts. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?”
Barry looked stunned, as if he’d just been slapped across the face. “I don’t hate you, Jess.”
“Oh really? What about that charming little letter you sent me? Was that a token of your affection?”
“Letter?” Maureen asked. “What letter?”
Jess bit down on her tongue, tried to stop herself from saying anything further. But it was too late. The words were already pouring out of her mouth. “Your husband sent me a urine-soaked sample of his esteem, along with clippings of his pubic hair.”
“What? What are you talking about?” everyone seemed to demand at once.
“Have you flipped out altogether?” Barry was yelling. “What are you saying, for Christ’s sake?”
What
was
she saying? Jess wondered suddenly, aware that their yelling had triggered a fresh onslaught of tears in the twins. Did she really believe that Barry could have sent her that letter? “Are you saying it wasn’t you?”
“I’m saying I haven’t got the foggiest notion what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You’re swearing again,” Jess said.
Barry sputtered something unintelligible in response.
“I got an anonymous letter in the mail last month,” Jess expanded. “It was filled with strands of pubic hair and soaked in urine. When I spoke to you on the phone a little while later, you asked me if I’d gotten your letter. Are you denying it?”
“Of course I’m denying it! The only thing I ever sent you in the mail was a notice about individual retirement accounts.”
Jess vaguely recalled tearing open a letter, seeing something about a registered retirement savings plan, tossing it away without much thought. My God, was that what he’d been talking about on the phone that day? “That’s what you sent me?”
“I’m an accountant, for God’s sake,” he told her. “What else would I send you?”
Jess felt the room starting to spin. What was the matter with her? How could she have accused her own brother-in-law of such a depraved act? Even if she’d believed it, how could she have said it out loud? In the man’s own home? At his dinner table? In front of his family?
Her sister was voicing the same sentiments. “I can’t believe you’d say these things!” she was crying, holding her son in her arms, “I can’t believe you’d even think them.”
“I’m sorry,” Jess said helplessly.
Tyler wailed at the sight of his mother’s tears. The twins shrieked in their Jolly Jumpers.
“Children, can we just calm down,” Art Koster urged, speaking to the grown-ups.
“It’s just that Barry and I had just had that big argument,” Jess tried to explain, “and I knew how angry he was, how he liked to get even, and then I got this letter in the mail, and soon after that, I spoke to Barry and he asked me if I’d gotten his letter. …”
“So you concluded he was the one responsible! That he could have such a sick, perverted mind. That I could have married such a disgusting individual!”
“You had nothing to do with it. Maureen, this isn’t about you!”
“Isn’t it?” Maureen demanded. “When you attack my husband, you attack me too.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jess argued.
The twins cried louder, Tyler squirmed out of his mother’s arms and ran upstairs.
“You haven’t given him a chance from the day we got married,” Maureen yelled, her free arms waving frantically in the air.
“That’s not true,” Jess countered. “I liked him fine until he turned you into Donna Reed.”
“Donna Reed!” Maureen gasped.
“How could you let him do it?” Jess demanded, deciding that now that she was in it, she might as well go all the way. “How could you give up everything and let him turn you into Superwife?”
“Why don’t I take the twins upstairs?” Sherry offered, deftly lifting the girls from their Jolly Jumpers and carrying them upstairs, one under each arm.
“Children, why don’t we stop this now before we say things we’ll regret,” Art Koster said, then sighed, as if acknowledging it was already too late for that.
“Just what is it exactly that you think I’ve given up?” Maureen demanded. “My job? I can always get another job. My education? I’ll always have that. Can’t you get it through that thick head of yours that I am doing exactly what I want to do? That it was
my
decision, not Barry’s,
mine
, to stay home and be with my children while they were young. I respect
your
choices, Jess, even if I don’t always agree with them. Can’t you respect mine? What is so wrong with what I’m doing?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Jess heard herself say. “Don’t you realize that your whole life is a repudiation of everything our mother taught us?”
“What?” Maureen looked as if she had been struck by lightning.
“For God’s sake, Jess,” her father said, “what on earth are you talking about?”
“Our mother raised us to be independent women with lives of our own,” Jess argued. “The last thing she would
have wanted was for Maureen to be trapped in a marriage where she wasn’t permitted room to grow.”
Maureen’s eyes glowed with red-hot fury. “How dare you criticize me. How dare you presume to know anything about my marriage. How dare you drag our mother into it!
You
were the one,
not me,”
she continued, “who was always fighting with Mother over these exact issues.
You
were the one,
not me
, who insisted she was going to get married while she was still in school, even though Mother pleaded with you to wait.
You
were the one who fought with her all the time, who made her cry, who made her miserable. ‘Just wait till you’ve finished law school,’ she kept saying. ‘Don’s a nice man, but he won’t give you any room to grow. Just wait till you’ve finished school,’ she begged you. But you wouldn’t listen. You knew everything then, just like you know everything now. So stop trying to assuage your own guilt by telling everyone else how to live their lives!”
“What do you mean, my own guilt?” Jess asked, almost breathless in her anger.
“You know what I mean.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fight you had with Mommy the day she disappeared!” Maureen shot back. “I’m talking about how I called home from the library that morning, I guess just after you stormed out of the house, and she was crying. And I asked her what was wrong, and she tried to tell me it was nothing, but finally she admitted that the two of you had been going at it again pretty good, and I asked her whether she wanted me to come home, and she said no, she’d be fine, she had to go out anyway. And that was the last time I spoke to her.” Maureen’s features looked in danger of
melting, her eyes, nose, and mouth sliding across her face as she dissolved into a flood of frustrated tears.
Jess, who had risen to her feet at some point during the confrontation, sank back into the seat. She heard voices yelling, looked around, saw, not her sister’s dining room, but the kitchen of her mother’s house on Burling Street, saw not her sister’s tear-streaked face, but her mother’s.
“You’re all dressed up,” Jess observed, coming into the kitchen, and noting her mother’s fresh white linen dress. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Since when do you get so dressed up to go nowhere?”
“I just felt like putting on something pretty,” her mother said, then added casually, “and I have a doctor’s appointment later on this afternoon. What are your plans?”
“What kind of doctor’s appointment?”
“Nothing special.”
“Come on, Mom. You know I can always tell when you’re not telling me the truth.”
“Which is one of the reasons you’ll make a great lawyer.”
“The law has nothing to do with the truth,” Jess told her.
“Sounds like something Don would say.”
Jess felt her shoulders tense. “Are you going to start?”
“I wasn’t trying to start anything, Jess. It was just an observation.”
“I’m not sure I appreciate your observations.”
Laura Koster shrugged, said nothing.
“So, what kind of doctor’s appointment is it?”
“I’d rather not say until I know for sure whether I have anything to worry about.”
“You’re worried already. I can see it in your face. What is it?”
“I found a little lump.”
“A lump?” Jess held her breath
.
“I don’t want you to worry. It’s probably nothing. Most lumps are.”
“Where is this lump?”
“In my left breast.”
“Oh God.”
“Don’t worry.”
“When did you find it?”
“This morning, when I was taking a shower. I called the doctor and he’s sure it’s nothing. He just wants me to come down and let him have a look at it.”
“What if it’s not nothing?”
“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Are you scared?”
Her mother didn’t answer for several seconds. Only her eyes moved.
“The truth, Mom.”
“Yes, I’m scared.”
“Would you like me to come to the doctor’s with you?”
“Yes,” her mother said immediately. “Yes, I would.”
And then the conversation had somehow veered off track, Jess recalled now, seeing her mother at the kitchen counter making a fresh pot of coffee, offering Jess some blueberry buns she’d purchased from a nearby bakery.
“My appointment’s not till four o’clock,” her mother said. “Will that ruin your plans?”
“No,” Jess told her. “I’ll call Don. Tell him our plans will have to wait.”
“That would be wonderful,” her mother said, and Jess understood immediately that her mother wasn’t referring to simply the plans they’d made for the afternoon
.
“What is it you have against Don, Mother?” she asked
.
“I have absolutely nothing against him.”
“Then why are you so against my marrying him?”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t marry the man, Jess,” her mother told her. “I think Don is a lovely man. He’s smart. He’s thoughtful. He obviously adores you.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Jess demanded
.
“The problem is that he’s eleven years older than you are. He’s already done all the things you’ve yet to try.”
“Eleven years is hardly a major age difference,” Jess protested
.
“It’s eleven years. Eleven years that he’s had to figure out what he wants from his life.”
“He wants me.”
“And what do you want?”
“I want him!”
“And your career?”
“I’ll have my career. Don is very intent on my becoming a successful lawyer. He can help me. He’s a wonderful teacher.”
“You want a partner, Jess. Not a teacher. He won’t give you enough room to grow.”
“How can you say that?”
“Honey, I’m not saying you shouldn’t marry him,” her mother repeated
.
“Yes, you are. That’s exactly what you’re saying.”
“All I’m saying is wait a few years. You’re only in first-year law school. Wait till after you pass the bar exam. Wait till you’ve had a chance to find out who you are and what you want.”
“I know who I am. I know what I want. I want Don. And I’m going to marry him whether you like it or not.”
Her mother sighed, poured herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee. “You want a cup?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Jess said stubbornly.
“Okay, let’s just drop it.”
“I don’t want to drop it. You think that you can raise all these issues, and then say let’s drop it just because you don’t feel like discussing it anymore?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You’re right. You shouldn’t have.”
“Sometimes I forget you know it all.”
“Oh, that’s rich, Mother. Really rich.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have said that. I guess I’m a little nervous today, and maybe more upset than I realized.” Tears filled her mother’s eyes
.
“Please don’t cry,” Jess begged, looking to the ceiling. “Why do you always have to make me feel so damn guilty?”
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.”
“You have to stop trying to live my life.”
“That’s the last thing I want, Jess,” her mother said, tears falling the length of her cheek. “I want
you
to live your life.”
“Then stay out of it! Please,” Jess added, trying to soften the harshness of her words, knowing it was too late
.
Her mother shook her head, dislodging more tears. “I don’t need this, Jess,” she said. “I don’t need this from you.”
And then what? Jess wondered now, feeling like a large windup toy, unable to stop spinning until its battery ran out. More careless words. More angry protestations. Pride speaking for both of them.