happened.”
I’d always known that at times Frances envied my freewheeling life, which could be arranged and rearranged and then left undisturbed—there was no one but me to knock my lampshades askew. Of course we both knew that I envied her life even more, for its settled commotion: the comings and goings of children, the husbandly phone calls about picking up something for dinner, the reliable everyday stir around meals and homework and clearing the table. Never in her life would Frances be greeted by a cold look of surprise, in an unfamiliar bed, on a morning when she had overstayed her welcome.
“You’ve always been such a good storyteller,” she added placatingly.
“Well,” I said, somewhat mollified, “in the
real
story Twain wasn’t such a great father.” I looked down at my plate, aware suddenly of my own father, sitting on the other side of Walter. “He was very unpredictable. He’d fly into terrible rages about little things, anything, like missing shirt buttons or the soup being cold. One minute he’d be laughing, the next minute screaming. I guess these days he’d probably be diagnosed as manic depressive.”
“
These
days,” repeated Frances, interrupting me once more. “These days everybody’s got a diagnosis. I read the other day that Nabokov probably had Asperger’s syndrome. And scientists all have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Anybody interesting has something wrong with him.”
She picked up her fork and looked at the slice of pie on her plate as if she couldn’t recall how it got there. Her ice cream had melted into a puddle.
“How about his wife?” she asked suddenly. “She was supposed to be lovely. Didn’t she make Christmas baskets for poor people? Everybody loved her.”
“Livy Clemens was an invalid.”
Frances put down her fork reasonably. “But isn’t that what a lot of women were in those days, especially if they had difficult husbands? Neurasthenics. I was just reading something about it.”
“Livy was paralyzed for two years after going skating as a teenager and falling on the ice.” I was annoyed at being goaded into divulging this information yet proud of knowing it. “She was never totally well after that. A faith healer finally got her out of bed by pulling up the window shades. But she died of hyperthyroid heart disease.”
“Weird,” said Jane, looking interested for the first time since this conversation began.
“As for the daughters,” I went on, before Frances could interrupt me again, “the oldest died of spinal meningitis when she was in her early twenties. The youngest was an epileptic, who drowned in her bath on Christmas morning in her thirties. After staying up all night wrapping presents for her father.”
Frances made a hoarse little noise. Then, as if to stop herself from further protest, she reached out to square a pewter candlestick.
“So what about the middle one?” Jane was pulverizing the pie crust on her plate, pinching it between her fingers. “Didn’t you say there were three daughters?”
“Clara outlived everybody. She was the only one who got married.”
I was watching Frances as I said this and caught a flicker of relief on her face.
“Did she have any kids?” asked Jane.
“One daughter.”
“What happened to her?”
I tried to ignore the feeling that it was indecent to be talking about Mark Twain’s daughters in this way. Trotting out my facts and nuggets. Showing off how much I knew about their troubles. When they had been private people, as private as I was myself, full of painful reservations about who they were and what was expected of them, not forthcoming to strangers who would, of course, have been curious. I could see them so plainly, standing in front of their fancy brick house, with its turrets and balconies and porte cochere. Wearing yellowed white dresses of eyelet lace, black stockings and laced boots, their hair tied back with ribbons, their dark eyes sharp and distrustful.
But
I’d always known that at times Frances envied my freewheeling life, which could be arranged and rearranged and then left undisturbed—there was no one but me to knock my lampshades askew. Of course we both knew that I envied her life even more, for its settled commotion: the comings and goings of children, the husbandly phone calls about picking up something for dinner, the reliable everyday stir around meals and homework and clearing the table. Never in her life would Frances be greeted by a cold look of surprise, in an unfamiliar bed, on a morning when she had overstayed her welcome.
“You’ve always been such a good storyteller,” she added placatingly.
“Well,” I said, somewhat mollified, “in the
real
story Twain wasn’t such a great father.” I looked down at my plate, aware suddenly of my own father, sitting on the other side of Walter. “He was very unpredictable. He’d fly into terrible rages about little things, anything, like missing shirt buttons or the soup being cold. One minute he’d be laughing, the next minute screaming. I guess these days he’d probably be diagnosed as manic depressive.”
“
These
days,” repeated Frances, interrupting me once more. “These days everybody’s got a diagnosis. I read the other day that Nabokov probably had Asperger’s syndrome. And scientists all have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Anybody interesting has something wrong with him.”
She picked up her fork and looked at the slice of pie on her plate as if she couldn’t recall how it got there. Her ice cream had melted into a puddle.
“How about his wife?” she asked suddenly. “She was supposed to be lovely. Didn’t she make Christmas baskets for poor people? Everybody loved her.”
“Livy Clemens was an invalid.”
Frances put down her fork reasonably. “But isn’t that what a lot of women were in those days, especially if they had difficult husbands? Neurasthenics. I was just reading something about it.”
“Livy was paralyzed for two years after going skating as a teenager and falling on the ice.” I was annoyed at being goaded into divulging this information yet proud of knowing it. “She was never totally well after that. A faith healer finally got her out of bed by pulling up the window shades. But she died of hyperthyroid heart disease.”
“Weird,” said Jane, looking interested for the first time since this conversation began.
“As for the daughters,” I went on, before Frances could interrupt me again, “the oldest died of spinal meningitis when she was in her early twenties. The youngest was an epileptic, who drowned in her bath on Christmas morning in her thirties. After staying up all night wrapping presents for her father.”
Frances made a hoarse little noise. Then, as if to stop herself from further protest, she reached out to square a pewter candlestick.
“So what about the middle one?” Jane was pulverizing the pie crust on her plate, pinching it between her fingers. “Didn’t you say there were three daughters?”
“Clara outlived everybody. She was the only one who got married.”
I was watching Frances as I said this and caught a flicker of relief on her face.
“Did she have any kids?” asked Jane.
“One daughter.”
“What happened to her?”
I tried to ignore the feeling that it was indecent to be talking about Mark Twain’s daughters in this way. Trotting out my facts and nuggets. Showing off how much I knew about their troubles. When they had been private people, as private as I was myself, full of painful reservations about who they were and what was expected of them, not forthcoming to strangers who would, of course, have been curious. I could see them so plainly, standing in front of their fancy brick house, with its turrets and balconies and porte cochere. Wearing yellowed white dresses of eyelet lace, black stockings and laced boots, their hair tied back with ribbons, their dark eyes sharp and distrustful.
But
Similar Books
