Good Riddance(30)
“And that’s why he burst into the guy’s office, because he sent you flowers? Unh-unh. Something’s missing.”
It certainly was, such as my damn DNA. I’d never give up my spot as number one daughter, undoubtedly with Holly’s gleeful demotion of me to stepchild. I took a sip of two-day-old water from the glass on my night table before admitting, “I may have left out a critical part—that Dad knew about this crush on Mom, which caused some marital troubles.”
“When? And what kind of trouble?”
I needed an answer that wouldn’t comport with my exact age plus nine months. “When Mom was young. Before she was married, I think.”
“That doesn’t sound like Dad—being jealous of a boyfriend Mom had before they were married.”
“I think Dad suspected the crush wasn’t one-sided.”
“And the flowers meant what?”
“A romantic gesture, therefore creepy.”
“A romantic gesture toward you?”
I didn’t acknowledge the incredulity in her voice. “As you well know, I look a lot like Mom. So you can connect the dots—he’d been in love with Mom since he was seventeen, and then I show up like he was in some kind of time warp.”
How was that going over? Not well. Holly said, “Dad would’ve laughed about a student having a crush on Mom. I don’t get the anger part.”
“Well . . . she went to every reunion that class ever had. And there was that stupid yearbook she had under lock and key.”
Did I have to bring that up? Because Holly’s next request was for me to overnight it.
“No can do.”
“Use our FedEx account. I’ll give you the number.”
“It’s not the postage. I don’t have it anymore.”
Holly waited. Surely I’d be explaining where it was and how soon I could retrieve it. I said, “I threw it away during a decluttering phase . . . What did you want it for?”
First, a lecture: How could I? Was I that unfeeling, knowing Mom wanted me to have it even if we didn’t understand why? Finally: “I want to see what Armstrong wrote to Mom.”
“He didn’t write anything.” Except dots that probably meant something and an ancient phone number.
“And his picture? Was he good-looking?”
I possessed no compassion for—or loyalty to—the man, but she was talking about half my DNA. “Exceptionally good-looking,” I said.
I confess that I’d been picturing myself in a potential documentary, musing about my life, going deeper, interpreting my mother’s actions and motives. I wasn’t proud of myself for having these filmic daydreams, projecting like a high school glee club soloist crooning into a hairbrush. Even as I resisted Geneva and her cockamamie plan, I’d fallen asleep conducting thoughtful, nuanced analyses of my mother’s moral fiber. One thorny contradiction: As I was growing up, she was never anything but devoted and normal, always interested in me, my friends, my homework; willing to stay up late to proofread my book reports, sew my Halloween costumes, bake for the bake sale. Might the documentary include the home movie of her running alongside me, as best she could, straight from school, in a pencil skirt and heels, laughing and cheering the first time I rode my bike without training wheels?
I did have this to contribute under the heading “Negatives”: If your mother is a teacher and your father is a principal in a town with one high school, you’re going to be crouching in the back seat of the car, begging to be dropped off a block or two early. And it didn’t take a psychic to guess that my friends’ clamming up when I approached their table at lunch was because they’d been discussing Principal Maritch or second-period American Lit with Mrs. Maritch.
Might this be of interest to an audience—that my mother had grown up in Derry, New Hampshire, where her physician father served two terms as mayor? And would this induce a much-needed moment of levity: that the surname Winter inspired the doctor and his wife to name their three daughters for the months in which they were born? May, called Masie, came first, then June two years later, and finally my Aunt Augusta.
These model daughters went to church, to Sunday school, to Brownies, Girl Scouts, 4-H, ballet, piano, baton. All three went to public schools, which looked good in their father’s campaign literature, then to New Hampshire state colleges, with small weekly allowances meant to teach them the value of a dollar.
I debated whether or not I could riff on this possible paradox: my mother’s prudishness in light of the infidelity factor. She nursed several grudges related to other people’s perceived promiscuity, out of step with the 1960s and ’70s. Did I have an example? Yes. There was the college friend with whom she shared a cabin on a three-night cruise to Virginia Beach. My sister and I were made to understand that the friendship ended because of a shipboard romance—“romance” a euphemism for the friend’s enthusiastically losing her virginity.
Why tell her daughters this unless it was a morality tale? We heard that the friend had disappeared two of the three nights, her bed untouched. Unapologetically! It hadn’t been a long-term boyfriend, but someone she’d merely danced with the first night. The ship was called the Alice Roosevelt, seemingly an important part of the retelling for the rest of my mother’s life, adding presidential dignity to the voyage lest we think it was a love boat. Had she ever mentioned that the mayor of Darien, Connecticut, and his wife were aboard? Only about a million times. And that my mother, proud daughter of Derry’s mayor, analogous on a smaller, locally elected level to Alice Roosevelt Longworth herself, had dined at their table all three nights?