Family Linen (5 page)

“I wish I'd never heard it,” Sybill says.

“Well, I'm certain that's true, but there's a wide margin of error here, we must remember, in any of these interpretations. It's possible, you see, that you have simply repeated for me your worst fear, an early traumatizing fantasy.” Bob releases Sybill's hand and sits back in his chair. Outside, Sybill sees that the drizzle has stopped and a pale wash of sunlight lies over everything. Beyond the roses, down the street, Bob's mailman moves like a robot from house to house.

Sybill thinks of her mother, leading the Elizabeth Nolting Parsons Study Group, writing poetry, planning the guest list for Myrtle's wedding, dusting the figurines, embroidering an altar cloth for the Episcopal church, rolling out tiny balls of dough for cloverleaf rolls. “I remember the whole thing,” Sybill says. She knows it's always the one you least suspect.
I love my mother
, she thinks.

Bob clears his throat. “Sybill,” he says, “I really feel . . . ”

But Sybill has stood right up and now she's brushing off her skirt with that characteristic gesture she makes whenever she stands, a getting-down-to-business movement of the hands. “Listen, Bob,” she says, “thanks a lot. I hope my headaches go away but whether they do or not, I'll have to get to the bottom of this.” Then Sybill remembers something else, something perfectly dreadful: soon after that night, she took the long black flashlight from the high hook in the toolshed and shone it down the well. She remembers seeing her father's face there just for a minute, beneath the shiny black water. She saw his high pale forehead, his open eye. And not so long after that, the well was boarded up, and then cemented, as it has been ever since. Grass grows now where it used to be, on the mountainside behind her mother's house. “I guess I'll go home,” she says. By “home,” Sybill means Booker Creek instead of The Oaks.

“I would urge you to . . . ” Bob begins, but Sybill brushes past him, toward the sliding glass door and the real outside. She's had enough of her subconscious, to say the least! Sybill is furious at Bob now, at her mother, at Betty, at everybody. She has a vision of Edward Bing, upended among these roses. Sybill slides the door shut behind her. Striding briskly down the hypnotist's sidewalk through the sweet moist air so heavy with roses and rain, Sybill sighs heavily, jingling her car keys.

Myrtle is tired of going to parties where people ask, “What do you
do?
” She has noticed that this happens more and more lately, especially with the crowd from the new Racquet Club which they have just recently joined. As if you're bound to “do” something, like it's not all right anymore to be a homemaker. Nobody
used
to ask that. Myrtle says, “Oh, Don and the kids keep me so busy,” and just lets it go at that. Sometimes she says she's thinking about getting a real-estate license. She doesn't believe in making a big deal of anything in public. She refuses to make a spectacle of herself. But Myrtle typed her fingers to the bone putting Don through medical school, and she's not about to do
that
again! The only degree she ever wanted was her “MRS,” and she's got it, and that's good enough for her. As she told Lacy, their three children are her “PHD.” Childhood sweethearts, Myrtle and Don married when they were still in college, sophomore year, and she dropped out then, and it's been hard work and happiness ever since. Myrtle has often thought that love is not easy. Children are not easy either. But she has never regretted a thing. Myrtle considers that she and Don have a marriage made in heaven, but that is also because they work at it. She doesn't mean simply the Couples Communication Course they took at the community college last year, either. She means
constantly
.

And Myrtle feels that it's impossible to maintain the quality of a marriage, over the long haul, with both people out there “fulfilling themselves” all the time. As soon as the woman goes out and gets a job, the quality of life goes down. She's seen it happen again and again. Of course there may be more
money
, but that soon goes for clothes and fast foods and day care, and you lose out on those moments you cherish—anyway, the money isn't the point. And she doesn't mean women who
have
to work, either, more power to them, she means women who simply
choose
to. You just can't do everything, is all Myrtle has to say, although she has many friends who work and of course she'd never dream of saying it to their face. It's up to the individual. Myrtle can only speak for herself. She knows she's lucky that Don is so smart and has done so well. On the other hand, she wouldn't have married anybody who
didn't
have those qualities, the potential for success. As Don says, that's what it's all about. There's nothing wrong with money. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be successful in your job or in your marriage, either one. But if you want a successful marriage, you've got to
work
for it.

You can't afford to get fat, for instance, or let yourself go. You have to throw out your old lingerie and have sex in the afternoon. In general you've got to work to keep that spark alive between the two of you. Because the pressures of life are immense, and they'll put it right out, if you're not careful. Of course Myrtle doesn't serve dinner topless or meet Don at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap, as suggested by the woman who wrote that book. But she does try to have a really nice dinner ready for him every night when he comes home from the office, for instance, and she makes sure she's looking her best. Don has a right to
expect
that. And sometimes she'll have a little surprise for him, like the night Sean went on the ski trip with the church and she had a little picnic all fixed up for them to eat in the living room, on the rug in front of the fire. Those times are precious. “Occasions” are important.

And speaking of “occasions,” it was the day before Myrtle's birthday when everything started to happen. But that's not quite right, either. That's when her mother had the first major stroke. Things had started to happen about a year before that,
in spite of everything she knows and thinks and feels
—because somehow Myrtle is able to hold two opposite things in her mind at the same time. She loves her husband, Dr. Don Dotson, the dermatologist,
with all her heart
, and they have three lovely children nearly grown, and one of the few truly successful marriages of the eighties. Don is not only her husband, he's her best friend. They share everything—their hopes, fears, plans, a laugh or two. But it's also true that Myrtle has days when she feels like her whole life is a function of other people's, and it's also true that her children have turned into problem children. Karen, the oldest, is a long-haired countercultural type who is majoring in folklore and living with her boyfriend, a computer whiz. Myrtle just can't
see
it—Karen, who used to be so cute. When Karen
does
come home, which is seldom, she's hard to talk to. It's like a wall has grown up between her and Myrtle. Karen really doesn't listen to anything her mother has to say, she stares out the window, and nibbles her lip. She doesn't want to go shopping. Theresa, the middle one, is even worse. She's come home from college this summer saying she won't go back, that she has no intention of it, that college “sucks.” Theresa has announced that she plans to be a writer, for which she needs not classes but real life. Everything is ironic, Theresa says. And Sean, at fourteen, is the most incomprehensible of all—he's so angry, but no one knows why.

And it's also true that Myrtle has a lover.

She can't explain this at all.

Her lover's name is Gary Vance. He lives in a rented three-room cinderblock house south of town, toward the county line. Gary is an exterminator.

Myrtle was driving out there to break up with him when she saw the sign. It said
LORDY LORDY MYRTLE IS
40! This was the day (June 1) before her birthday (June 2). This sign was up on the billboard which Clinus had put out in front of the One Stop, which is owned by Myrtle's aunt Nettie and which she has to drive past twice every time she goes out there to visit Gary Vance. Clinus is her aunt Nettie's second husband's retarded son. Although retarded, he's done just fine—he has an antique and junk business on the side—
literally
on the side of the One Stop, in a sort of lean-to he's rigged up. Myrtle heard he got his billboard in a liquidation sale. She's not even so sure he's retarded. At any rate, it's the kind of billboard where you can change the letters on it, like a theater sign. Sometimes Clinus does real well with it and other times his messages don't make sense, such as
A STICK IN TIME
, for instance. Mostly it's
HAVE A GOOD DAY
or
SMILE
. Myrtle sees them all, driving back and forth from Gary's house. Clinus gets her tickled, always has. Mother wouldn't let them have a thing to do with him, of course, growing up, or with Nettie or Fay either, for that matter. But Myrtle thinks they're all harmless. Don has always said that Myrtle's mother is anal retentive and lives in a fantasy world, which is neither here nor there. Don and Myrtle both think Clinus's messages are funny.

Or at least she
did
, until
LORDY LORDY MYRTLE IS
40! showed up. How did Clinus
know
, anyway? Retarded people always know more than you think. She did not want Gary to see that sign whether she was breaking up with him or not. She did not want
anybody
to see it. Because it's true that if you don't look your age, which Myrtle doesn't, you don't want it broadcast around. And she has worked
hard
on herself. People simply cannot believe that she has a daughter twenty-two years old, or Theresa who is eighteen, or Sean, fourteen. They can't believe she's had three children at all. She's weighed one twenty-two for twenty years. So she was
furious
when she saw that message on Clinus's billboard. On the other hand, she didn't have time to stop.

Myrtle had been thinking, herself, about turning forty, and she had come to some conclusions. The main one was that she would break up with Gary as soon as she got to his house. They had broken up before, several times. Myrtle doesn't understand how she ever got into it, anyway. Of course she was practically a baby when she and Don got married, but that's no excuse. Childhood didn't last until twenty-five like it does now. And she knew exactly what she was doing. Still, they were very young. Myrtle had children herself when she was her own children's age. She was just a baby—Gary's just a baby now. Myrtle and Don grew up together, as Don says. “We're still growing—” Don says this, too, to everybody. Don believes in lifelong growth, in constant flux and change. Myrtle knows she's lucky. She knows that's right.

But about a year ago, Myrtle began to feel that she had stopped growing along with him. Something happened—she couldn't pay attention anymore. She found herself just sitting in the family room, for instance, for hours. Or she'd come out of the Piggly Wiggly with her groceries and not have the foggiest notion in the world where she'd parked the car. She kept watching Dan Rather every night with Don, but she couldn't understand the news. Lebanon for instance did not make sense. She really started noticing the cellulite on her thighs, she got tired of cooking everything she knew how to cook. She locked herself out of the house five times in two months, which she had never done before in her whole life. Nothing was
wrong
, exactly, but she began to feel like she was missing out—on what, she couldn't have told you.

Of course Myrtle had missed the sixties entirely, while she was having babies. She used to hear the Beatles on the radio, that was about it. When she wasn't having babies, she was typing. She typed her way through the late sixties and early seventies. She never took part in a demonstration, or went to a big rock concert. She never knew anything that happened until she read about it in
Time
. She watched Vietnam and Watergate on TV, of course. But she never bought a pair of blue jeans before she was thirty. So she missed the whole thing. Then throughout the seventies, she cooked dinner, folded clothes, handed out pencils in her kids' classrooms for standardized tests, chaperoned busloads of fourth-graders on field trips to Natural Bridge, drove Karen and Theresa to ballet. Those things are important. And Myrtle and Don were growing up together. When they were first married, for instance, Myrtle used the
Better Homes and Gardens
cookbook, then she used the Fanny Farmer cookbook, and then she used Julia Child. Myrtle started off with lemon chess pie and moved to quiche. Plus she was happy—she had what she wanted, and she'd never wanted the moon.

Don finished medical school, then interned in Richmond, and then they moved back home for him to set up his own practice even though several people warned him against Booker Creek as a permanent location. “Listen, people have acne
everywhere
,” Don said then. As usual, he was right. People come from miles and miles around to see him—he's the only dermatologist in this area.

But Myrtle is thinking about herself, about this feeling she got—or maybe she lost—last year.

For one thing, that's when gravity set in. Myrtle realizes that gravity has always been around, but she never noticed it until she was thirty-nine. Then right along her chinline, at either side of her mouth, something started to droop. Her breasts changed shape, hung lower. And her buttocks—which is probably what bothered her most, since Don is a self-professed “ass man”—really started to sag. Plus they had to have a new deck built on the house—the old one was just simply falling in. Anyway, gravity showed up, or at least Myrtle became aware of it. Once you become aware of something, you see signs of it everywhere.

The strangest thing about all of this is that Don didn't notice a thing. Nothing! He didn't notice her cellulite or the way she kept losing the keys. Their intimacy remained unchanged, remained, in its way,
total
, or perhaps it simply remained as total as it ever was. It made Myrtle wonder if all of it might—or might not—be simply
made up
. It made her wonder how anybody ever knows whether
anything
really happens, and if so, what it is, after all. Anyway, the intimacy remained.

One quality which Don has always had and which Myrtle has always loved is a kind of
paying attention
—it's the way he looks at you, how he cocks his head to one side, how he really listens to what you say. She's known Don since he was eleven years old, and he was already doing it then. Sometimes this quality makes her nervous, if she doesn't have much to say. But it's also one of the things she likes best about him, and she's sure other people do, too. Sometimes Myrtle imagines Don at work, wearing his white lab coat, with his blond head cocked just that way, listening to one of his patients. It makes her jealous, it makes her wonder—anyway, Don continued to pay attention. Only he missed it all.

The deck fell in, and Myrtle got a new one, and during the course of all this, she called the exterminator to have it treated. The exterminator who came was Gary.

That old song “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” was running through Myrtle's head when she pulled into Gary's front yard. His yard is not a yard at all, it's a junk heap. No grass—parts of cars, machines, and God knows what all just strewn around in the weeds. He said it was like this when he moved in, and he hasn't fixed up a thing. Gary's house is made out of concrete blocks, painted aqua. Then Myrtle thought of another song, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which has lines like “Go out the back, Jack” and “Get a new plan, Stan.” But Myrtle couldn't remember any more of the words. It made her feel sad to remember that back before she got married and started missing out on things, back in junior high and high school when she and Don were going steady, she was real popular and knew all the words to all the songs. Myrtle has always been popular, but that was the only time in her life that she ever knew all the words. Now she doesn't even know who the groups are. She parked her Toyota in a cloud of dust in front of Gary's house, next to his company car which has a large iron bug, orange, on top of it, and opened her car door, and the heat hit her like a sledge-hammer.