Family Happiness (25 page)

“No,” Polly said. “I didn't.”

“Huh,” said Martha. “Well, there you are. You know, telling me is really like telling a stranger in a saloon.”

“It is not!”

“It is so. I don't run in your set. I don't go to your dinner parties. I'm in your office life but not your
real
life.”

Polly turned back to the beans. What Martha said was perfectly true. Her life existed in neat little sections, like a grapefruit, but not so close to one another.

“Don't get in a flounce,” Martha said. “Aren't you hungry? Shouldn't we start cooking?”

“The potatoes are boiling,” Polly said. “Everything else takes two seconds.” She sat down. “I hate the way I am,” she said. “I don't have any courage and I'm a snob. Everything I was taught I swallowed whole because it was so easy. I can't even make a friend without insulting the friend. It was insulting to call Mary to make sure she would never tell, and it's insulting to you that you feel like a stranger in a saloon.”

“Cook,” Martha said. “Give me my dinner and I'll forgive you.”

“I was being serious.”

“So was I,” said Martha. “Feed me.”

While Polly washed the lettuce, Martha wondered out loud what being married was like if you were happily married.

“I mean before all this stuff with Lincoln happened,” she said.

“Oh,” Polly said. “It was everything I thought I wanted. I wanted to be the steward of my household, and I wanted to be married to Henry. It feels so odd to tell you how much I love him when you know about Lincoln, but I do love him. He's big and wonderful. He has real nobility of character. He's eccentric and level at the same time. He's a really wonderful father, and when he's not so distracted he can be an inspired husband. I'm so used to not wanting to think about anything that isn't right. My mother used to tell me over and over: You have to concentrate on the best and leave what isn't best alone. It's a good motto for a lucky family. But I seem not to be able to do that anymore. When we were happy, we really were happy and things rolled right along.”

“Even the not-best things,” said Martha glumly.

“It's a lot easier that way,” said Polly, “I can tell you.”

“And then one day you found yourself in the arms of a handsome stranger.”

“Try to shut up, Martha,” Polly said.

“I'm just trying to figure out how these things go,” Martha said. “You're all married. I'm all single. I don't know about this stuff, but I better learn because Spud nags me night and day and eventually something will have to happen, so I better be prepared. I hope the potatoes are done by now.”

“The potatoes!” said Polly and she jumped up. “They're very mushy,” she said. “We'll have to mash them. Give me your masher.”

“Are you crazy? I don't have any such thing.”

“Give me a strainer,” said Polly.

“I'm not prepared for these emergencies. I don't think I have a strainer. Will a hairnet do? Oh, here's a strainer. This
is
a strainer, isn't it?”

She watched Polly push the mushy potatoes through a sieve.

“Now, if I could learn to do that,” she said, “I'd have it all aced.”

“Martha, be quiet and check the lamb chops. You have a great many things aced and you like to complain anyway.”

“I
love
to complain. Look, I burned my hand.”

“It serves you right,” Polly said. “Dinner's ready.”

When it was time to go home, Polly said: “It's very strange to be the age I am and have absolutely no experience with friends at all. This is the first time I've had dinner alone with a friend since I had Pete, and I almost never have lunch with a friend, especially not on a Saturday.”

“So?”

“It ought to make me feel good,” said Polly, “but it makes me feel strange.”

And when she got home, she felt stranger. What would happen, she thought, if her home suddenly no longer felt like home, if there was no place on earth that she could be comfortable? How could she be comfortable if she did not feel like herself?

Pete and Dee-Dee were probably having a lovely time with their grandparents. Henry had his work, and Lincoln his show. Henry, Jr., had Andreya, and Paul had Beate. To put up with someone as moody as Martha, Spud must love her enormously. Mary Rensberg had her daughters, for whom she could take most of the credit.

Polly sat in her bedroom with her coat on, as if she were a guest about to leave. Nothing was going to get better, she thought. She had made her one false move. Others slipped and fell and made stupid plans, or plans that didn't work, or no plans at all. They got into terrible black moods and neglected their loved ones, and ordinary life went on. Polly did none of those things.

Why did a person for whom order and tranquillity were paramount suddenly find herself in the middle of a dark wood in which the things she had lived by and sworn allegiance to no longer fit her, in which correct answers were useless, in which feelings got out of hand and became not the means to an end but simply themselves: rampaging, clamoring, hungry?

The only person who had ever loved her for herself alone was Lincoln and she was going to have to give him up. Why didn't she simply go to the hospital and have her heart removed? He was her only comfort, the thing that kept her going. He pointed her out to herself. Without him the waters would close over her head and she would go back to being her old self—an empty edition of it—but functional. She would do what was expected of her, but her true heart would be forever closed to her family. No one would ever know her except Lincoln, and he would be as inaccessible to her as if he lived on another planet. In time, sorrow would leave her, and that would be a sort of death. Wasn't sorrow better than nothing? She would, of course, have her family, and as she had been told many times, family is the most important thing.

The next morning she was woken from a terrible sleep by the telephone. It was the children, calling from Maine. They had been to see Mrs. Dunaway, who had a new kind of chicken that laid light green eggs. Each child had been given an egg and had eaten it for breakfast. Dee-Dee had found a dead horseshoe crab on the beach and wanted to bring it home, but Pete said it smelled too disgusting. After these tidings, the telephone was taken away from the children and Wendy's voice came over the line. There was a tone of blithe hardness in her voice, a tone Polly knew well. Wendy was displeased. Polly supposed that she had forgotten something. She did not have to wait very long to be reminded what it was.

“Well, Polly, you haven't asked what time we're coming back,” Wendy said.

“What time are you coming back?” said Polly, who was groggy.

“Do you realize that your children have their spring break this week?” Wendy said.

So that was it. Polly's stomach turned. She had forgotten the children's spring break.

“Did you have a plan for it?” Wendy asked.

“No,” said Polly. She felt as if she had been kicked.

“If you had discussed this with me, you could have arranged to have them stay up here for a week,” Wendy said.

“You could still do that, couldn't you?” said Polly. “Daddy said he has time off.”

“That isn't the point,” said Wendy. “Yes, we can take the time, but I do find this very worrying. You farm the children out. You get your Consuelo to give them their afternoon snack. You aren't there three days a week. Your mind is on your job. So much so that you forget their spring break.
You
were not brought up that way. It alarms me to see you neglecting your children.”

Polly was silent.

“You and Henry have plenty of money,” Wendy continued. “This job of yours is doubtless very enriching to you, but it takes you away from your children.”

“What about all the volunteering you did when we were kids?” said Polly. “There were plenty of times when you weren't home. We had Mrs. Duffey when we were little, and Suzie when we were older, and you and Daddy went out a lot at night. It isn't so different.”

“It's very different,” Wendy said. “Your attitude is different.”

“Mother, I forgot their spring break. I've never forgotten their spring break before. I've never forgotten anything before. If you can't keep them up at Priory, bring them home.”

“And then what, Polly? Have them sit in the apartment every day with Consuelo while you go off to work?”

Polly put her hand over the telephone. She had begun to cry, and she felt it was dangerous to let her mother know.

“Is there something you'd like to tell me?” said Wendy. Her tone had changed. It was formal and demanding, as if to get a confession from a crook.

There was nothing Polly wanted to tell Wendy. Everything she had told Wendy for as long as she could remember was what Wendy wanted to know: I am class president. I have gotten excellent grades. I have won the Latin medal. I have been accepted to attend your old college. I am going to marry a very excellent man of whom you and Daddy will wholeheartedly approve. I am having a child. I am having another. I am taking my sister-in-law out to lunch. I am bringing you a chocolate cake.

Were there daughters anywhere who actually said to their mothers, “I'm having a terrible time. I'm having a love affair and need some advice.”

“There's nothing to tell you,” Polly said. “Put the children on a plane and I'll pick them up. You're my mother—you could help me out and keep the kids for a week. On the other hand, if you don't like the way I do things, perhaps you would rather not help me. I thought mothers were supposed to help—not make their daughters feel like criminals over some small mistake.”

Polly had never made such a speech to her mother. She was amazed at herself. She was no longer tearful, but furious.

“All right,” said Wendy, in a voice full of hurt. “I'll keep them here for the week.”

“I'd rather you put them on the plane,” Polly said. “I don't want them up with you listening to what a terrible and neglectful person their mother is.”

“Polly, I did
not
say that.”

“You did so,” said Polly. “I'm a very good daughter to you. You have gotten years of useful service out of me. I spend my life being nice to you. You do nothing but criticize me—my job, my time, my house. If this is the only wrong thing I've ever done, you should count your blessings. A lot of people would be happy to have me as their daughter.”

There was another long silence.

“I'm very sorry you feel this way, Polly,” Wendy said. Her voice was a blend of the formal and the contrite. “I think you must be under some strain. I've never heard you sound this way before. I'll keep the children here, since they're having such a good time, and bring them home at the end of the week. But I do think you ought to take stock of yourself. I can't think why you're so angry and upset.”

“Because I do one thing wrong out of thousands of right things and I get nailed—that's why,” Polly said. “Thank you for keeping the children. I'm sorry about the mistake. Now I want to get off the telephone.”

She hung up and sat looking out the window. She felt very free. She had never flown out at her mother, and she had never forgotten anything about the children before. She was that addled and distracted. It was sheer self-indulgence that had caused her to forget the children's school break. Polly had been rigorously trained to be virtuous, and deep inside she believed it was necessary that her character be constantly checked. Her real nature, without restraint, would get her into terrible trouble. And it had. It had led her into a love affair and she had forgotten her children's school holiday.

When her anger and remorse subsided, she was overwhelmed with tears. She missed Lincoln, plain and simple. She stood up and paced around the room.

“I am just in terrible trouble,” she said out loud. “I am in an awful state. I didn't mean to fall in love. I never meant to.”

Often she missed Lincoln so much that she could not breathe properly. She sat down on the chaise and stopped crying. She missed Lincoln more than she missed her husband or children and she missed him more than she was upset about her mother.

It was worse than grief or longing: she was marked for life. Nothing would ever change. She was condemned. She would always love Lincoln. This would prevent her from being happy with Henry. He would take the Solo-Miller side against her when the depth of her distress and distraction was revealed to him. He did not love her as she wished to be loved. Oh, the terrible, lonely, selfish longing to be loved in specific! She had set it up so that she would be caught between her faithful husband, who loved her generally, and a recluse who loved her specifically. Her future promised more of the same. The old Polly, Polly thought, would never have allowed this to happen. The new Polly was someone Polly didn't know—a yelping, roiling mass of needs, a person full of anger and desire. She did not see how she was going to stop loving Lincoln, and she did not see herself ever running off with him. Therefore she had condemned herself to a life of conflict and pain.

Her children would grow up very nicely all by themselves. But the thing about children was, they did not mitigate private grief, or compensate for private dread.

But Polly was not so much stoical as well behaved. She did not know much about behaving badly: she had really never done so. In bad times you organized your desk and paid your bills. You made lists of your priorities.

Polly sat down at her desk. The first thing, of course, was to say good-bye to Lincoln and mean it. It would be hard—breaking any addiction is hard—but it was clearly the right thing to do. It was right for Polly and it was also right for Lincoln. Now that he had had a little more experience in love, Polly was holding him back from meeting someone else. Yes, Polly would let him go free, and he would find a girl who would answer him perfectly—another painter, who understood what solitude was all about. The idea of this perfect person caused tears to course down Polly's cheeks. She thought of Mary Rensberg and how lucky she was to have the sort of mother you can take trouble to. She tried to imagine going to Wendy. It was unthinkable.