She's Come Undone (44 page)

I sat back in the chair, missing Grandma. We took turns writing or calling each other every other week, but our letters and conversations were polite and constipated. For Grandma, my bad past was “water under the bridge” or “that business a while back.” Listening to us talk, you'd have no indication death or sex or craziness existed. The women in the book hugged each other, played clarinets, made love to their balding boyfriends. I was twenty-five years old, sitting in the Montpelier library
waiting for the man I loved and who loved me back—but I was also my obese self pouting up in my bedroom at Grandma's. My six-year-old self in dungarees, riding with my father through the wet blur of a car wash. An eighth grader in Jack Speight's MG, my hair whipping in the wind on the way to that dog pound to be destroyed . . . Except he
hadn't
destroyed me after all. Dante had come along and
un
raped me. There seemed no good way to tell Grandma that. Who was Grandma beyond arthritis and rosary beads, anyway? Who had she been in bed with her husband? “Women, unite!” That idea shook me up.

“Boo,” Dante whispered.

He grabbed my hand and led me toward the door. “Hold on,” I said. “I want to check this book out.”

At the circulation desk, he gave me a quick kiss. “Oh and just for the record,” he said, “it's ‘I want to
check out
this book.' You don't split your verb phrase.”

*   *   *

On my day off, I read
Our Bodies, Ourselves,
cover to cover. I had no other woman to discuss Dante with, no one to tell me if keeping all my secrets from him was wise or dangerous. I ached for a woman friend.

“Hello?” It was Tandy's fiancé, Rusty; they were living together, same as Dante and me. One time in the store, Rusty had ripped open a bag of M&M's at my register and started shooting them at Tandy while she checked out customers. She thought it was funny. According to another cashier, Tandy had had an abortion.

“Is Tandy there?” I asked. “This is Dolores. From work.”

“Just a second.”

His hand squashed against the receiver, making a sound like farting.

“She's not here right now,” he said.

*   *   *

“Dear Grandma,”
I began. The letter came out nonstop.

 

I'm not sure where to begin this, but I have some news. I'll just come out with it. I'm in love! His name is Dante and he's a high school teacher here in Montpelier. We don't have any plans yet, but I'm hoping it will come to that. You put up with a lot from me when I was so sad and sick and I wanted you to share my happiness with me, too. We're planning to visit you for Christmas if that's okay. I hope that you'll learn to love him. He's kind to me—and so much fun!

Grandma, how did you and Grandpa fall in love? Were you sure about him when you married him or did you have doubts? When we visit, I'd like to sit down with you and ask you about your life.

I hope these questions don't make you uncomfortable. I wouldn't have written it if I didn't feel so strongly about these things. If you would like to answer any of my questions, please write back. Or call me on the phone collect. Being in love with Dante is scary and wonderful. I love you very much.

 

In the next few weeks, Dante kept picking up
Our Bodies, Ourselves
but it didn't hold his interest.

At work, Tandy and the other cashiers made up; the bridesmaids were reinstated. From their stations, they discussed wedding preparations, calling past me as I straightened up the already-neat rows of Life Savers and tabloids, waiting for customers.

Overdue notices from the library began to appear in the mail, and bills and circulars, but no word from Grandma. One afternoon at work I forgot Grandma's face; when I tried to picture her, all I could see was Mrs. Wing. I kept promising myself I'd return the book as soon as I heard from Grandma. Maybe my letter had gotten lost in the mail, I reasoned. Maybe someone like me had stolen it before it got to her.

“Are we on for Christmas at your grandmother's or not?” Dante asked one morning at breakfast.

“She hasn't let me know yet.”

“Find out, will you? If we're not going, I was thinking it'd be nice to spend the holiday at Sugarbush. Teach you how to ski.”

It took me until late afternoon to dial. Listening to the ringing, I saw Pierce Street outside, the front foyer, Grandma approaching the telephone. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to hang up.

“Grandma? It's me.”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

There were voices in the background. “Do you have company or something? I can call back.”

“That's the television,” she said.

“Oh. How are you?”

“As good as someone with my arthritis can expect to be, I suppose.”

“I was wondering . . . if you got a letter I sent you?”

Those television voices. Then, “I did. Yes.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“So, what do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“Well, would it be all right for Dante and me to come for Christmas?”

“Of course it would be all right.”

“Okay, great. I've been kind of waiting for you to get back to me.”

“You're my granddaughter, aren't you? Why wouldn't it be all right? I don't want to bother with any tree, though. Haven't put up a Christmas tree since your mother passed on.”

“I can understand that, Grandma. It's not important.”

“Those needles stick in the carpet. They're there all year round, no matter how careful you are. You think you've gotten them all and then in July, there some still are. Sticking like burrs.”

I waited.

“Are you two shacking up?” she said.

“Grandma!”

“Well, I may be old-fashioned, but I'm not a nincompoop. Isn't that your young man who answered the telephone two different times when I called? Said he was a friend of yours or some such?”

“We live in the same house, Grandma, in separate apartments.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “Well, you're a grown woman now. I suppose if they can do it on ‘The Young and the Restless' . . .”

“Grandma, do you remember those things I asked about in that letter? Do you think we'd be able to talk about some of them when I see you?”

“It's not an easy thing, you know, planning a holiday dinner. Pies, potatoes. You have to start the turkey first thing in the morning. Do the stuffing the night before, of course.”

“Well, don't worry about that, Grandma. I can help you. Besides, Dante's a vegetarian.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“He doesn't eat meat. You don't even have to bother with a turkey.”

“I thought you said he was a schoolteacher.”

“He is.”

“Well, am I wrong or are those vegetarian people all hippies and some such? You know, young lady, if you're fooling around with drugs up there after all that other business you've been through, then you'd better think long and hard about what you're doing. You know what happened to poor Art Linkletter's daughter, don't you? Smoked some of that LSD business and took a bad trip—jumped right out the window and killed herself.”

“Grandma, my apartment's in the basement. . . . What I was trying to say in that letter is that sometimes I don't feel like I really know you. It's my fault as much as yours. We withhold ourselves from each other.”

“Don't know me? Of course you know me. What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don't know things like—well—things like how you and Grandpa fell in love. Or what your life together was like.”

She sighed, disgusted. “Now I know all this psychology stuff or psychiatry stuff or whatever the dickens you call it—I know it did some good with you. Straightened out what that one upstairs did to you. And your mother's death . . . But your grandfather and I just worked hard all our lives, that's all. People didn't have time back then to stop and worry about things all the time. Pick things apart and such. It's water under the bridge. I've forgotten half of that business.”

“How did you first fall in love?”

“Now, really, Dolores—stop all this badgering. I'm a private person. Why stir up a hornet's nest?”

“Grandma, you can
get
private with me. I'm your flesh and blood.”

She cleared her throat. “Now, I can give you a wedding if you and this fellow would like. Nothing too fancy, but I have some money put aside.”

“His name is Dante, Grandma.”

“Of course, you'll have to decide whether you want to invite your father or not. That's your business.”

“Grandma, we haven't even discussed anything like marriage.”

“Well, I'm not surprised
he
hasn't. There's an old saying, you know: Why should a man buy a cow when he can get the milk for free?”

“Grandma? Are you happy for me? Are you glad I'm in love?”

“Well of course I'm happy for you. What a thing to ask.”

“Grandma? . . .” I said.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I'm putting the phone down now to check something.”

When she got back, her voice sounded different—harder. “I'll say one more thing, Dolores Elizabeth, and then, as far as I'm concerned, the subject is closed. I've buried a husband and two children—a nineteen-year-old son and a daughter who was only thirty-eight. . . .” She paused, cleared her throat twice, and I suddenly realized she was
crying. “If you want to love someone, then go right ahead. I
know
what love feels like; you and this young man didn't invent love. But the Lord Almighty doesn't give out any promises just because you love someone. Love only gets you so far.”

I listened to the labor of her breathing. “I'll see you at Christmas, Grandma. I love you very much, if that's okay?”

“What a thing to ask,” she sputtered. “Sheesh.”

I hung up and began that night's dinner, Lentil Loaf Supreme. Poor Grandma was wrong: Dante and I
had
invented love—a kind she knew nothing about. If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy like Grandma.
“Two sixty-two Pierce Street, the house of repression,”
Ma had once said. And Dr. Shaw:
“Repression doesn't make it any easier, Dolores. It just wastes energy.”

I decided to tell Dante everything that night: my parents, Jack Speight, Kippy's letters, Dr. Shaw. I heard him reacting to the unburdening of my secrets in the same soothing voice he used on the phone with his crisis students, who he didn't even love the way he loved me.
Whom
he didn't love. Objective, not nominative, case. The thought of telling the truth filled me with an enormous, exhausting calm and I left the supper preparations and lay back on the daybed. “You're triumphant!” I heard Dr. Shaw say, that night at the pool when I'd let out the truth.

When Dante got home, he flung his briefcase so hard against the wall that it flew back at him. “Tell me something,” he said. “Am I intense?”

“Uh . . . what do you mean?” I said. It felt like a stranger had barged in.

“Just what I said. Am I intense? You've
heard
of the word before, haven't you?
That
one's in your expansive vocabulary, isn't it?”

There was a vein in his forehead. His whole body leaned toward me, waiting for my answer. I scrapped my planned confession. “Intense? No, you're not intense. Why?”

“Because my vice principal thinks I am. Asshole Ev. I got my evaluation today—three ‘needs improvements.' He says I'm too intense.”

He threw open the refrigerator door and grabbed a beer. Then he went to his own apartment and slammed the door. In another fifteen minutes, he came back for the rest of the six-pack. He pretended I was invisible.

“Do you want a back rub?” I said.

“Nope.”

“Do you feel like talking about it?”

“It's like—their whole philosophy of education at that school is fucked up.” He looked over at me, accusingly.

“It certainly sounds like it is,” I said.

“I mean, Ev Downs has sat on his ass parked in neutral for twenty-five years. I'm the only one at that whole goddamn school the kids can relate to and I'm going to sit there and listen to him make it sound like I've got a
fucking
personality disorder?” He overexaggerated the word “fucking”—took extra pains with its pronunciation.

“Well,” I said. “Try to forget it. I made lentil loaf for supper and maybe afterward we can—”

“That's it? ‘Try to forget it, I made lentil loaf'? Gee, I'm overwhelmed by your loyalty, Dolores. Thanks
so
much for your support.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's just that, well, you're kind of scaring me and . . . and I don't know what to say.” I began to cry. He watched me, curious, like a scientist.

For the next two nights, I slept alone in my apartment, nursing my nervous stomach with Tums. Then on Thursday a dozen yellow roses arrived for me at work with a card that said, only, “LOVE/US.” I put the flowers in a coffee can on top of my register. All day long, customers told me they were beautiful. When I'd catch the other cashiers looking at them, they'd jerk their heads away.

That night, Dante wanted sex on the floor, not in the bed. He was
rough and urgent; it hurt. But I kept my mouth shut, grateful for his love, no matter how he delivered it.

“Hey, Home Ec,” he asked me later. “On a scale of one to five, how would you rate me as a lover?” He had walked me over to the mirror and made us look at ourselves. He pawed me while he waited.

“Five and a half,” I said. “Six, Dante.”