muddled. “Only a linguist could translate,” my father says fondly, now that he deals with this on a less regular basis.
I both adore her mania and hate it. It has given me the ability to stand apart from things and to brood to the point of cruelty.
“Mother, we’re all right. I was hoping we could stay here for a little while. Simon and I are having some differences. Jane and Isaac are with him, and I have Daisy. Please don’t mind.”
Out with it ’s been my method with Mother for a long time. Otherwise we’ve got an eternity of circumlocution and non sequitur to decode.
“Well, I couldn’t possibly mind. But what about Jane, then, and Isaac. Will he be able to manage them. What will they do all the day?”
“They’re in camp, Mother. I haven’t been kidnapped. I’m still their mother. Daisy needs me more right now. And I need you to be calm.”
“Well of course I’ll be calm. But you can hardly expect an unannounced visit to go unnoticed, particularly when half the family is missing. Where one earth did you find to park at this hour.”
I tell her about the train.
“Good God. You could have taken the yellow car, Leigh, and not bothered with all that.”
Sometimes I think our differences could be summed up in the matter of nomenclature. She calls our jalopy “the yellow car”; I call it “the mustard bomb.” She calls her arrangement with Dad “an experiment”; I call it “separation.” Pas comme il faut is her way of describing unacceptable behavior, whereas I would simply say it was crude or unacceptable. Occasionally I yearn for that gentility, but most of the time I mourn its impracticality. Still, it is easy, with Mother, to get swept up in the flourish of her idiom.
“I don’t know,” I say. “There’s something about a train.”
She ignores me.
“Nama,” Daisy says, and she squeezes my mother’s long cheeks, arranging her face horribly. But Mother allows it.
“You’re my little fatty,” she says. Then, turning away from the glory of Daisy, “Well, in any event, you’ll need some breakfast and something to put on for a few days. And I want to hear all about this business when we’re settled. Do you want your father in on it yet?”
“No.”
“He’s expecting all of you on Saturday.”
“We’ll be there, in some form.” I hear myself fading out, voice trailing away as it does when I’m overwhelmed. Dad loves Simon and he loathes conflict, which he considers unnecessary and luxurious given the state of our world. If I don’t find some way to assure him that this is temporary, another of my aberrant responses to what is surely a paradise of a life, he’ll be crushed.
I sit at the kitchen table and welcome her coffee, thick as diesel. Mother has always ignored the proportion advice as far as coffee’s concerned. One heaping tablespoon of grinds for every six ounces of water is the way she does it. Daisy waits in the old high chair, the one sans safety strap (“Sucha lot of rubbish, all these accoutrements,” Mother says of such things), for her food. Mother fixes her a boiled egg and toast dripping with butter and strawberry jam, which does nicely in lieu of waffles. She admires Daisy’s appetite.
“I don’t know what went wrong with Jane. She eats so poorly, always has. But look at this one!”
I know how I’m supposed to take this: you ruined her (Jane) with all that breast milk. She never got used to other food.
“Jane gets what she needs,” I say, horrified at the hollowness of that statement, given where I am. Mother doesn’t respond, just goes on with the feeding.
• • •
Outside Macy’s, where, Mother’s convinced me, we’ll find a few sale items for Daisy and me to tide us over, she says, “I do think Jane ought to be with you, you know. Isaac is old enough now for a few days of this sort of thing, but Jane isn’t.”
As I haven’t yet told her about Fowler, I can’t fathom her ability to understand what “sort of
I both adore her mania and hate it. It has given me the ability to stand apart from things and to brood to the point of cruelty.
“Mother, we’re all right. I was hoping we could stay here for a little while. Simon and I are having some differences. Jane and Isaac are with him, and I have Daisy. Please don’t mind.”
Out with it ’s been my method with Mother for a long time. Otherwise we’ve got an eternity of circumlocution and non sequitur to decode.
“Well, I couldn’t possibly mind. But what about Jane, then, and Isaac. Will he be able to manage them. What will they do all the day?”
“They’re in camp, Mother. I haven’t been kidnapped. I’m still their mother. Daisy needs me more right now. And I need you to be calm.”
“Well of course I’ll be calm. But you can hardly expect an unannounced visit to go unnoticed, particularly when half the family is missing. Where one earth did you find to park at this hour.”
I tell her about the train.
“Good God. You could have taken the yellow car, Leigh, and not bothered with all that.”
Sometimes I think our differences could be summed up in the matter of nomenclature. She calls our jalopy “the yellow car”; I call it “the mustard bomb.” She calls her arrangement with Dad “an experiment”; I call it “separation.” Pas comme il faut is her way of describing unacceptable behavior, whereas I would simply say it was crude or unacceptable. Occasionally I yearn for that gentility, but most of the time I mourn its impracticality. Still, it is easy, with Mother, to get swept up in the flourish of her idiom.
“I don’t know,” I say. “There’s something about a train.”
She ignores me.
“Nama,” Daisy says, and she squeezes my mother’s long cheeks, arranging her face horribly. But Mother allows it.
“You’re my little fatty,” she says. Then, turning away from the glory of Daisy, “Well, in any event, you’ll need some breakfast and something to put on for a few days. And I want to hear all about this business when we’re settled. Do you want your father in on it yet?”
“No.”
“He’s expecting all of you on Saturday.”
“We’ll be there, in some form.” I hear myself fading out, voice trailing away as it does when I’m overwhelmed. Dad loves Simon and he loathes conflict, which he considers unnecessary and luxurious given the state of our world. If I don’t find some way to assure him that this is temporary, another of my aberrant responses to what is surely a paradise of a life, he’ll be crushed.
I sit at the kitchen table and welcome her coffee, thick as diesel. Mother has always ignored the proportion advice as far as coffee’s concerned. One heaping tablespoon of grinds for every six ounces of water is the way she does it. Daisy waits in the old high chair, the one sans safety strap (“Sucha lot of rubbish, all these accoutrements,” Mother says of such things), for her food. Mother fixes her a boiled egg and toast dripping with butter and strawberry jam, which does nicely in lieu of waffles. She admires Daisy’s appetite.
“I don’t know what went wrong with Jane. She eats so poorly, always has. But look at this one!”
I know how I’m supposed to take this: you ruined her (Jane) with all that breast milk. She never got used to other food.
“Jane gets what she needs,” I say, horrified at the hollowness of that statement, given where I am. Mother doesn’t respond, just goes on with the feeding.
• • •
Outside Macy’s, where, Mother’s convinced me, we’ll find a few sale items for Daisy and me to tide us over, she says, “I do think Jane ought to be with you, you know. Isaac is old enough now for a few days of this sort of thing, but Jane isn’t.”
As I haven’t yet told her about Fowler, I can’t fathom her ability to understand what “sort of
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