Oh William!, page 3
So we discussed that for a few minutes; William said what he had said before, that I was an idiot to think Wally Packer was innocent. And I let it go.
And then I suddenly asked William, “Did you enjoy the party?”
He said, after a pause, “I guess so.”
I said, “What do you mean, you guess so? Estelle put a lot of work into that party.”
“She hired a caterer, Lucy.”
“So what? She still put it all together.” The barge was moving quickly; it always surprises me how quickly they can move, it must have been empty, it was riding high, I could see a lot of the black underneath of it.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. No, it was a great party. I have to go now.”
“Pill,” I said. “Let me just ask you. How are your nights going? You know, your nighttime terrors?”
And I could hear in his voice that this was why he had called me. “Oh Lucy,” he said, “I had one last night—well, it was around three o’clock this morning. About Catherine—It’s really weird, I can’t describe it exactly. I mean, it’s like she’s hovering there.” He paused and then said, “I think I might have to take a drug. It’s getting really tough.” He added, “It’s like Catherine is with me, I mean, her presence, and it’s just—it’s just not good, Lucy.”
“Oh Pillie,” I said. “Man, I’m just so sorry.”
We talked a bit more, and then we hung up.
But here is something I had not thought of until William called and spoke to me of the party:
The night of the party I had walked into their kitchen with a glass to put down and to say goodbye to Estelle, who was walking slightly ahead of me, and there was a man in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, he was a friend of hers, I had met him before, and I heard Estelle say to him quietly, “Are you bored to death?” And then she turned and saw me and exclaimed, “Oh Lucy, it was so fun to see you again!” And the man said the same—he had always seemed like a nice fellow, another theater person—and I chatted with Estelle and we kissed on the cheek and I left. But I had not liked the tone of her voice with the man; there was an intimacy to it, and it implied—perhaps—that she herself was bored, and this was a thing I did not care for. It was a tiny ping I felt, I guess is what I am saying. But I had forgotten about it until then.
Also (I suddenly remembered this too), the tulips I had brought were still in their wrappings on the kitchen counter. This did not especially disturb me; the party had arrangements from a florist, it had been silly to think that tulips from a corner market would be wanted there.
It was the voice of Estelle that lingered.
My husband became ill early that summer, and he died in November. That is all I am able to say about that right now, except that it had been a very different marriage from my marriage to William.
Except I do need to say this: My husband’s name was David Abramson and he was—oh, how can I tell you what he was? He was him! We were—we really were—kind of made for each other, except that seems a terrifically trite thing to say but— Oh, I cannot say any more right now.
But there is this: Both with the discovery of David’s illness, and then again with his death, it was William I called first. I think—but I don’t remember—that I must have said something like “Oh William, help me.” Because he did. He got my husband to a different doctor—a better one, I do believe—although there was nothing any doctor could do at that point.
And then, with the death, William helped me again. He helped me with some of the business aspects—there is so much to do when a person dies, different credit cards to close, and bank accounts and so many computer passwords—and William told me to let Chrissy organize the service, which was very smart of William; Chrissy did all of that.
It was Becka who came and stayed with me those first nights; she did my crying for me at that time. She wept and wept with the abandonment of a child, then flung herself onto the couch, and a few minutes later she said something—I have no idea what—and we both started to laugh. She is like that, dear Becka. She made me laugh, and then she had to go home, as she should have.
At David’s service in a funeral home in the city—which was then, and is now, all a blur to me—I do remember Becka whispering to me, “Dad wishes he could sit up here with us.”
“He said that to you?” I asked, turning to look at her, and she nodded solemnly. Poor William, I thought.
Poor William.
At Christmastime, Estelle called and asked me if I wanted to come and have Christmas Day with them. I said it was really kind of her to ask me, but no, I was going to be with the girls, and as soon as I said that I remembered Becka’s saying how William had wanted to sit up front with us during the service, and it did go through my mind that William might have wanted to spend Christmas with the girls and me, that maybe he had asked Estelle if we could be included. But he had had Christmas with Estelle and her mother for years now, and Bridget, of course; Estelle’s mother was almost William’s age. I have an image of their apartment all done up for the holidays with a big Christmas tree, Becka had told me about it; she said, wryly, that it was as festive as Macy’s. And I said, “Not as expensive as Saks?” And we had laughed. And there was a yearly Christmas party they went to at night nearby in their neighborhood; William had always enjoyed that.
“I understand,” Estelle said. “But just know we’re thinking of you, Lucy. Okay?”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“We know it has to be hard with David gone,” she said. “Oh Lucy—I feel so bad for you.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Don’t worry. But thank you,” I said again. “I really do appreciate it.”
“Okay.” Estelle hesitated. “Okay,” she said again. “Well, bye-bye.”
So a new year began. And in rather quick succession, two events happened to William. But let me mention just a few more things first.
In January, William told me—on the phone from his lab, and after we had spoken of the girls—that for Christmas he had given Estelle an expensive vase that she had admired in a store one day. And she had given him a subscription to an online thing where you could find out about your ancestors. I could tell by the way he told me that he had been disappointed with the gift. Gifts have always been important to William in a way I have never understood. “But that was smart of her,” I said. “What a good idea.” I said, “You know almost nothing about your mother, William, this could be good.” I do remember that I said that. And he only said “Yeah. I guess.” This was the William who was tiresome to me, the petulant boy beneath his distinguished and pleasant demeanor. But I did not care, he was no longer mine. And when I hung up I thought: Thank God. And I meant about him being no longer mine.
But here is one thing I would have told the Pam Carlson woman, had I stayed and talked with her at that party for William: A few years before David died we went to Pennsylvania for his nephew’s marriage. David had been raised a Hasidic Jew right outside of Chicago, and he had left that community when he was nineteen; they ostracized him then, he had had no contact with any of his family until just recently, when his sister got in touch with him, so I did not know her well; she seemed a stranger to me because she was. We went on the train and then his sister picked us up and we drove through the dark for half an hour to a hotel in the middle of nowhere. It had snowed the night before and I sat in the backseat and stared out the window at all the darkness going by, the rare house could be seen and, every so often, various stores—one with a sign on it that said GOING OUT OF BUSINESS FOREVER—or storage-looking places, and my heart was so heavy. Because it all made me think of William and how when we were young and I was in college we would drive through the night from Chicago back East to see his mother and we drove through places like this, snowy areas that looked forlorn, but I had felt so happy with him, I felt snug with him. William had no siblings, as I have said—and in a way, at that point, neither did I—and there was, that night as I drove with my current husband and his sister, a strong memory of coziness, because William and I had been a world unto ourselves, and I remembered one drive back East when he had said I could throw my peach pit out the window, and I had thrown it out his window for some reason, he was driving, and the peach pit hit him in the face, and I remember we laughed and laughed, as if it were the funniest thing that had ever happened. And then also a few years later we would drive to Newton, Massachusetts, to see his mother with our baby girls tucked into their car seats, and there was still that sense of coziness. But that night in the backseat of the car as we passed the snowy acres of land and I sort of heard my husband and his sister speaking quietly of their childhood, passing by billboards that said HIT BY A CAR? CALL HHR, I thought to myself: William is the only person I ever felt safe with. He is the only home I ever had.
I might have told Pam Carlson that had I not walked away.
About my former mother-in-law, Catherine, I would like to say this:
When I first became engaged to William she asked me with excitement, it was almost the first thing she asked me, she was on the telephone, “Will you call me Mom?” And I said, “I’ll try.” But I could never do it. I could only call her Catherine, which is what William did. Catherine Cole had been her maiden name, and sometimes William called her that with a slight tone of irony and a twinkle in his eye. “Catherine Cole, what have you been up to these days?”
We loved her. Oh, we loved her; she seemed central to our marriage. She was vibrant; her face was often filled with light. A college friend of mine who met her for the first time said afterward, “Catherine is the most immediately likeable person I have ever met.”
I thought her house was remarkable; it was on a tree-lined street in Newton, Massachusetts, with other houses nearby. The first time I saw it, sunshine was streaming through the kitchen windows and the kitchen was large with a white table in it, and it shone with cleanliness. The counters were white and a large African violet sat on one of the window shelves over the sink. The kitchen faucet was a long thing that arched out over the sink, and it sparkled a silver color. I thought I had stepped into heaven. Catherine’s entire house was clean; the wooden floors in the living room shone a honey color, and the bedrooms had curtains that were white and starched-looking. Never did I think I could live like that. It did not occur to me. But that she lived like that! Really, I could not get over it.
I need to say this, though:
I wrote about it in an earlier book, but I need to explain it more, which is that when I first met William and heard that his mother had been married to a potato farmer in Maine, I thought—because I did not know about potato farms in Maine—that she would have been rather poor. But this was not the case. Catherine’s first husband, the potato farmer Clyde Trask, had run a good and successful farm, and he had also been a politician; he was a Republican state legislator in Maine for many years. And Catherine’s second husband, William’s father, when he came to America after the war, became a civil engineer. So Catherine was not poor. And when I met her I was surprised at the elegance of her home. I think she had ended up rather high on the social scale. I have never fully understood the whole class business in America, though, because I came from the very bottom of it, and when that happens it never really leaves you. I mean I have never really gotten over it, my beginnings, the poverty, I guess is what I mean.
But Catherine, when I first met her, would introduce me to her friends, and she would say quietly with her hand on my arm, “This is Lucy. Lucy comes from nothing.” I wrote about that in a previous book.
In Catherine’s living room was a long couch, a sort of tangerine color, and Catherine would sometimes be stretched out on the couch if we arrived without her knowing, which we did sometimes because William liked surprising her. “Oh! Oh!” she would say, scrambling up, “Come give me a hug,” and we would go to her and then she would take us to the kitchen and give us food, always talking, always asking how we were, telling William he needed to have his hair cut. “You’re such a handsome boy,” she would say, putting her hand on his chin. “Why can’t we see more of you? Get rid of that mustache.” She was light itself. Mostly she was. Once in a while she seemed more subdued and she would say, almost laughingly, “Oh, I have the blues,” and William said she had always been like that, not to worry, but even when she was subdued she was still kind, always asking about the details of our lives; our friends’ names she knew and she would ask about them too. “How is Joanne?” I remember her asking. “Has she found a husband yet?” And then she said, winking at me, “She’s a little dour, that one.”
She would sit at the table and watch us eat. “Tell me everything!” she would say. And so we did. We told her about our life in New York City, we told her about the downstairs neighbor whose wife was much younger than he was and she didn’t seem to like him, and I told her how the old man one day had blocked the stairs and wouldn’t let me get past until I had kissed him. “Lucy!” she said. “That’s horrible! Don’t you ever kiss him again!” And I told her I had to, and she said, “No. You do not have to.” I said it had just been a peck on the cheek, but it had made me feel weird. “Of course it made you feel weird!” She shook her head and ran her hand up and down my arm. “Lucy, Lucy,” she said. “Oh my dear child.”
Then she turned to William and said, “And where were you, young man, while your poor wife was getting molested?”
William shrugged. This is how he was with his mother. Playfully rude.
Catherine bought me clothes. Frequently she bought clothes she liked, but sometimes she let me buy something I liked: a striped shirt to wear with a pair of jeans, a blue-and-white dress with a dropped waist that I loved. Once she wanted to buy me white loafers. “You will live in these,” she said. I asked her not to buy them, I would never have worn them; they were something she would have worn, this is what I thought but did not say, and in the end she did not buy them.
She did, a few months after William and I were married, get rid of a coat that I loved. I had bought it in a thrift shop for five dollars and I loved the huge cuffs and the way it swung when I walked, it was navy blue, I just loved that coat, I thought it was me. And Catherine threw it away one day after taking me to buy a new one. I don’t remember watching her throw it away, I only remember that she laughingly said that she had done so when I asked where it was. “You have that nice new one now,” she said.
The funny thing to me, I mean funny-interesting, is that the new coat she bought for me came from a store that was not where they sold especially nice things. I did not know that for a number of years, until I began to sort out the different stores. But it was almost a store where people went who had little money. In my youth we had never gone to such a store; we went to almost no stores at all. But my mother-in-law had money; she had it partly because her husband Wilhelm Gerhardt, William’s father who became the civil engineer, had left her a very good life-insurance policy, and she got that money when he died. A few years later she got her real estate license and she sold many houses in nice neighborhoods. So she did have money. That is all I am saying here.
She gave me her old nightgowns; they were nice, white with embroidery on them. I wore those.
As I contemplated her now, I understood why William, when he had his nighttime terrors of Catherine, would think of me as comfort. It is because—except for our girls who were eight and nine when Catherine died—it is because I am the only person left who had known his mother. Joanne does not count. She moved to the South after they divorced. She never got remarried. I think she never did, I am not sure.
Catherine asked me one day early on—William and I were not yet married—to tell me about my family, and I opened my mouth and then tears came down my face, and I said, “I can’t.” And she stood up from where she had been sitting in a chair and she came and sat next to me on the tangerine couch and put her arms around me and said, “Oh Lucy.” She kept saying that, rubbing my arms and my back and pressing my face to her neck. “Oh Lucy.”
She said to me that day, “I get depressed too.” And I was amazed. No one I ever knew, no grown-up, had ever said that—and she said it sort of casually—and she hugged me again. I have always remembered that. She carried within her that kindness.
Catherine always smelled good; there was a certain perfume and this was her scent. It was because of this that eventually I began to wear a certain perfume—though not hers—and have my own scent. It seemed I could never buy enough body lotion of this scent.
That lovely woman psychiatrist said one day with a shrug, “It’s because you think you stink.”
She was right.
My sister and my brother and I were told on the playground almost every day at school by the other children, while they ran off with their noses pinched, “Your family stinks.”
Right before William turned seventy-one, Chrissy told me she was pregnant. I felt a burst of happiness I had not known I could feel again since David had died; William and I spoke on the phone about this—a grandchild!—and he seemed pleased, though not as ecstatic as I was; this is how he is, it is just his nature, is what I mean. But then two weeks later Chrissy had a miscarriage. She called me from home early in the morning, and she screamed, “Mom!” She was on her way to the doctor’s. So I went immediately to Brooklyn—I took the subway because at that time of day it is the fastest way to get there—and I went to the doctor’s office and then I went to her home and we lay on the couch together while she wept; oh, I had not known Chrissy could weep in such a way, and she—taller than I am—lay with her head on my chest until she finally slowed in her crying; her husband was home, he had been at the doctor’s office too, but he left us alone in the living room. I did not tell her she would get pregnant again; I did not think that is what she needed to hear. I just held her, and pushed her hair gently away from her face. “Mom,” she said, looking at me, “I was going to call her Lucy if it was a girl.”
