“I guess so,” Polly agreed; she could hardly do otherwise, when her sister-in-law’s cheerleader shouts could be heard all the way to the kitchen. They were even louder in the dining room when she went back for a load of dessert plates. As she stacked them she thought how apt her roles and Bea’s were. She brought her mother complaints and irritations, like soiled dishes, and Bea, with her mild wash of resignation and explanation, patiently sluiced the mess away. Even though she saw through the process, it still made Polly feel calmer.
“I do really feel Carolee is one of the family now, you know,” her mother said as Polly returned.
“Oh, yeah,” Polly replied; in her opinion Carolee, who was a scientist and a jock, was all too much like a Milner.
“I think she’s going to be good for Alby. Of course, she’s not as brilliant as he is; but she’s an awfully nice girl, don’t you think?” Bea helped herself to a couple of grapes from one of the plates Polly had just brought in; her eating habits were also birdlike.
“She’s nice enough,” Polly agreed. “But she’s not very interesting.”
“Well, maybe not.” Bea sighed as she scoured the sticky dish that had held sweet potatoes. “But I don’t think that really matters so much. You know, Polly, when you’re young you always want people to be interesting. Then later on you find out it’s much more important for them to be serious and decent. I’ve noticed that at work.”
“Oh?” For the last eight years, Bea had been an assistant dean — a glorified secretary, really — in the university summer-school program.
“Whenever we get an application that says a student is ‘interesting,’ and not much else, I always put a little
W
next to his or her name now. For Watch out.” Bea giggled suddenly. Since she usually didn’t drink, the glass or two of sherry she allowed herself on holidays always made her a little blurry.
“How is your job going, by the way?” Polly asked, realizing that in the clamor of family news Bea had volunteered none of her own.
“Oh, very well. Of course, this is our quiet season, we’re only just getting the catalogue together.”
“So things are all right with you,” Polly said; it was hardly a question, for Bea was chronically contented.
“Oh, yes. I have everything I want.” She hesitated, holding an ugly Corning Ware serving dish under the tap; the warm water, splashing on its edge, sent up a kind of transparent fan. “I’d like for you to be happier, that’s all.”
“I’m fine,” Polly said.
“I worry about you sometimes, you know.”
“Oh?” Polly said, surprised; it was unlike her mother to worry about anything.
“Mm. You see, when I married Bob, I thought it would be the best possible thing for you, to grow up in a pleasant place like Rochester. In a normal family. But I wonder sometimes if maybe after we moved here I didn’t pay you enough attention. I was always thinking about the boys: Alby’s asthma, and the trouble Hans used to have with reading. But you were so sensible, so articulate, so talented; I knew you’d always be all right. At least, I thought you’d always be all right.” She wiped back a stray lock of hair with one wet reddened hand.
“I am all right, really,” Polly assured her. For years she had wanted to hear her mother admit that she might have done something wrong. But now that this was happening it made her embarrassed and uncomfortable, as if the kitchen were tilting and sliding into the cellar.
“You weren’t really unhappy, growing up here, were you?” Bea dropped the dishcloth into the sink and turned to look at her daughter.
“It was okay. It was fine,” Polly lied.
“I was so sorry it didn’t work out for you with Jim. But I expect you’ll find another nice man soon.” Bea put a handful of spoons into the dishwasher, giving Polly a quick little smile that was also a question.
“Mh,” Polly said. No, I’m not going to find a nice man soon, she thought, because there aren’t any “nice men” in New York. What I’m looking for now, probably, is a nice woman.
I might as well tell her the truth, she decided, staring past Bea at the new kitchen wallpaper, which had a clumsy pattern of spice tins in avocado, orange, and brown. (Why would any graphic artist have wanted to design such a drearily hideous wallpaper, or any shop have ordered it?) She’ll be upset, Polly thought, but so what? It was always so hard to get a rise out of her mother; why shouldn’t she be upset for once? “I’m not sure I will,” she said. “Uh, you know my friend Jeanne, that you met in New York last year, the one that’s sharing my apartment now.”
“Mm.” Her mother nibbled absently at the end of a leftover breadstick.
“Well, she’s a lesbian. And I think I might be one, too.”
“Oh, Polly.” Bea dropped her breadstick into the dishwater. “Really?”
“I’m not sure. But I might.”
“Well, dear, if that’s what you want,” Polly’s mother said finally. She wrapped some celery in a piece of plastic. “I mean, your friend Jeanne seemed like a very nice girl.”
“Yes, but she’s not, I mean, we’re not —” Polly stuttered.
But Bea wasn’t listening; she was gazing past her daughter with an odd faraway smile. “You know, when I was in high school, I had this
tremendous
crush on the captain of the girl’s tennis team.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes.” Bea giggled again; she was certainly tipsy. “She was so tall and athletic; she reminded me of your father, in a way. Well, I suppose I should say he reminded me of her when I met him, because of course that was years later.”
“You mean, are you telling me, you and this girl were lovers?” Polly stared at her mother across a counter of marbled avocado vinyl.
“Oh, no. Well, not exactly, anyhow,” Bea said, smiling and fitting a plate into the dishwasher. “I mean, I positively adored her, but we didn’t
do
anything, of course. Well, not anything
serious,
you know.” She giggled.
“I thought you’d be shocked,” Polly said, a little shocked herself.
“No, dear. It’s not like men, after all, is it? With those awful bars they go to, and the dreadful diseases they get. If it was Hans, say, of course I’d be very worried for him. But it’s different for us. There’s a woman in my office now, she and her friend have been together for eighteen years, and they’re the nicest quietest people you’d ever want to meet, except they do have rather an awful Abyssinian.”
“An Abyssinian?” Polly, confused by everything her mother had said in the last few minutes, saw a dark-skinned butler — or cook, maybe? — in a turban.
“A cat, you know.” Bea giggled. “But I think really it would be better not to say anything about it to Jim,” she added. “I mean, not until you’re sure. He likes people to be consistent. And if it turns out not to be so after all, he’ll think you don’t know your own mind.”
Polly stared at her mother again; never in her life had she heard her suggest that anything should be kept from Jim. “Okay,” she agreed, wondering if she knew her own mind, or anyone’s.
“And the same for Stevie, don’t you think?” Bea added two cups to the dishwasher.
“I wasn’t planning to say anything to Stevie, not yet,” Polly agreed. “I thought I’d wait until he moves back home.”
“Much better. Well, I think that’s all the plates we can fit in on this load.” Bea poured the detergent dispenser full of grainy pink-and-white powder from a box named Comet, closed the door, and pushed ON.
When Polly, with Stevie behind her, unlocked the door to her apartment on the afternoon of the day after Thanksgiving, she expected to find it as she had left it: empty, cold (she had turned down the thermostat), dark, and untidy. Instead it was full of warmth and light and flowers. An explosion of ice-pink long-stemmed roses crowned the desk; another even larger one of gladioli spread green-and-white moth wings above the coffee table.
She stood dazed; then there were steps in the hall and Jeanne came running in.
“Oh, Polly!” she cried, almost laughing. “The most wonderful thing has happened, Betsy’s left her husband!”
“That’s great,” Polly said, jerking her head to warn Jeanne that her son was there.
“Oh hello, Stevie.” Her friend’s voice dropped an octave and lost volume.
“Hi,” Stevie replied with an equal lack of enthusiasm.
“Well, anyhow.” Jeanne took a breath. “I’ve moved my things into your spare room. I thought I’d stay here tonight and tomorrow, it’s so horribly crowded at Ida’s. People are sleeping all over the floor, and you can simply never get into the bathroom.” She smiled uneasily. “If it’s okay with you, that is.”
“Sure, it’s okay,” Polly repeated; what else could she say?
“What was that all about?” Stevie inquired audibly as he followed his mother down the hall.
“Nothing. Just somebody Jeanne knows, who’s been having trouble with her marriage.” Polly swallowed, distressed to hear herself lying — fudging, at least — to her son.
As soon as Stevie had left to visit a friend she got the details. Jeanne had phoned Betsy the night before Thanksgiving, with dramatic results. “I’m so grateful to you,” she cried, hugging Polly again. “Really, if you hadn’t suggested it, I might never have called her.”
At the other end of the line, Betsy had wept with relief. “I thought it was too late; I thought you never wanted to see me again,” she had sobbed happily. Then she had packed her bags, called a taxi, and come straight to Jeanne. While Polly was in Rochester they had had a joyous reunion in Polly’s bed.
“I knew it would be all right,” Jeanne said, smiling. “I mean, I knew you’d got Stevie’s room all ready for him, and I didn’t want to mess it up. Of course I changed the sheets again for you. Oh Polly, it was so lovely.” Jeanne held out her arms as if to embrace the whole world; her cheeks were flushed pink with retrospective pleasure. “You don’t mind?”
“No.” Polly shook her head, irritated to discover that she did mind. “Of course not. So where’s Betsy now?”
“She’s at her parents’ house up in New Canaan, till Monday. She was supposed to have gone there for Thanksgiving, with the husband, but she called to say she was sick. She’s going to tell them everything now.”
“Uh-huh,” Polly said. “So she’ll be staying there for a while?”
“Oh no; just for this weekend, it’s much too far to commute to the college, and of course we want to be together. We’ll share her place in Brooklyn Heights as soon as that creep leaves.” Jeanne leaned over the gladioli, pinching off a half-dead bloom.
“He’s going to move out, then?”
“Oh yes. He’ll have to, because Betsy owns half the apartment; it was bought partly with her parents’ money. But I thought that until then she could stay here.”
“He-yere?” Polly couldn’t prevent a break of dismay in the middle of the word.
“Just for a little while. After Stevie leaves, of course. I thought what we might do is move the bunk bed into your room, maybe take it apart into twin beds, that’d be more convenient for you. And then move the double into Stevie’s room for us.” She smiled brightly. “That would be so much nicer.”
“Well,” Polly said. “I don’t know.”
“Naturally Betsy would help with the expenses, so we’d all be saving money.”
“Mm,” Polly said, thinking that her friend hadn’t said “share.” But then, why should she? From Jeanne’s point of view, Polly was almost rich. Jeanne was scraping by on a mingy academic salary, and Betsy, who taught freshman composition part-time on a one-year contract, was even harder up.
All the same, Polly felt cross and beleaguered, like a child whose parents were arranging her life behind her back. She didn’t want Betsy in her apartment, and she wanted to sleep in her own bed. But to say so would sound selfish and grudging. And after all, it would only be for a few weeks, probably. It couldn’t be more, because Stevie would be home for good before Christmas. “That’s true,” she admitted.
“Oh, wonderful. Thank you, dear.” Jeanne, who had been shifting uneasily along the sofa, bounced up to give Polly another quick hug. “I want to apologize to you, too,” she added. “I know I’ve been awful to live with ever since I broke up with Betsy.”
“You haven’t, really.”
“Oh, yes, I have, Polly. I’ve been frightfully moody and distracted, and not much help around the house either. And you’ve been an angel to put up with me. But I’ll make it up to you now; we both will. Oh, I’m so happy. I’m going to call Betsy right now.”
“I’d like to ask you something,” Polly said after Jeanne had murmured a final series of childish endearments into the phone. “When Stevie gets home, could you give us some time alone to talk?”
“Oh, sure. Is something the matter?”
“No; I just didn’t get much chance to see him in Rochester. My family was all over the place, you know what they’re like. So if you could stay out of the way for an hour or so —”
“How do you mean, out of the way?” Jeanne said, her voice rising slightly. “Do you want me to go out and walk around the block for an hour? Because I can’t go into the park now, you know; it’s nearly dark out already.”
“No, of course not,” said Polly. “But if you’d just, I don’t know, go and work in my bedroom while I make dinner?”
“All right,” Jeanne agreed. “Just let me know when I can come out, okay?”
But in fact Jeanne didn’t stay in the bedroom. Instead, after Stevie returned, she wandered around the apartment like a cat whose territory had been invaded — though maintaining a considerate silence.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to interrupt your conversation,
her manner seemed to say.
But you can’t fault me for going to the bathroom or looking for the
Times.
Whether it was because of Jeanne’s hovering presence or not, Polly was unable to break through Stevie’s reserve, though he’d been fairly voluble on the plane and in the taxi from La Guardia, talking about what he wanted to do in New York and the kids he planned to see. Over supper he was still unnaturally quiet and polite; and whenever something almost like a conversation got going, it soon died away. Maybe because it was clear that though Jeanne was really trying, she found his subjects — skiing in Colorado,
Star Trek,
Halley’s Comet — deeply uninteresting. If it was going to be like this, Polly thought, she might as well have stayed in Rochester, surrounded by relatives. It might even have been better; if Stevie didn’t talk to her there she wouldn’t have noticed so much.