Tender at the Bone (25 page)

“Every night?” I asked incredulously, determined to make it up to him.

I canned tomatoes. I baked bread and pies and cakes. Doug built shelves in the kitchen and we hung up a six-foot ad for a can of peas we had found outside a supermarket. We divided up the rest of the rooms. The living room was mine, a jumble of colors and textures, with a red velvet couch and Tunisian pillows all over the floor. The dining room belonged to Doug: it was very spare, with white walls, a black floor, and a big round table in the middle. The only decorations were his gray sculptures, smooth abstract forms.

My letters home were laced with recipes. “I got an A on my Sienese renaissance paper,” I bragged, “and I’ve invented a
pumpkin soup you bake right in the pumpkin. First you cut off the crown and take out the seeds and strings. Layer it two thirds full with toasted bread and grated gruyère cheese. Then fill it up with cream. Put the crown on and bake it in a 350° oven for two hours. Serve it at the table right from the pumpkin, being sure to scoop out the pumpkin meat with the goodies. Everybody loves it.”

Mom was not interested in recipes or grades; she got right to the point. “When,” she wrote back, “are we going to meet Doug?”

I put it off as long as I could. But the following summer, after I had passed my master’s exam, I finally ran out of excuses.

“They’re giving my mother lithium,” I said as we loaded the van for the trip to Connecticut, “she seems pretty balanced at the moment. Still, you can’t be too careful with her cooking. When she gives you something to eat watch me before you put it in your mouth. If you see me pushing it around on the plate, do the same.”

“You’ve said that before,” Doug said. “Stop worrying. It will be fine. I won’t let her poison me. And they’re going to like me.”

“You mean as much as your parents like me?” I asked.

“They do like you,” he insisted.

It was after ten when we pulled into the driveway, but my parents were still sitting at the table, holding hands as the light from the candles flickered in the bay windows of the darkened dining room. I introduced Doug, Dad poured him a glass of wine, and Mom and I went into the kitchen. My parents had already eaten, but Mom had saved a couple of lobsters and she had the water boiling. After we dumped the beasts into the pot I went back to the dining room to rescue Doug from Dad. He didn’t need my help; they were so deep in conversation they didn’t even see me.

“You’ve gotten thin,” said Mom later, as we cleared the table. The men had gone out to the lawn to smoke. I nodded.

“It must be love,” she prompted.

I nodded again. I didn’t want to have one of those intimate conversations my mother conned me into, the ones where I said more than I meant to and regretted it later. I felt soft and vulnerable and I ran up to bed as soon as the kitchen was clean. Doug was still outside, still talking to my father.

I read for a while but I was almost asleep by the time I felt Doug’s long body next to mine. “Why didn’t you tell me your father flew with Wilbur Wright?” he asked.

“He did what?”

“He flew with one of the Wright brothers. Didn’t you know that?” He leaned on one elbow, looking down at me.

I didn’t. My mother took up so much space that I had spent my entire childhood not noticing my father’s silence. He almost never talked about himself. “I don’t even know what city he was born in,” I realized.

“Leipzig,” said Doug. “But by the time the Wright brothers came to Germany the family was living in Berlin.”

“Tell me about my father flying,” I remembered.

Doug reached for me and I turned so that we were nestled like spoons. He stroked my hair and whispered, “No, you ask him.” And we turned out the light.

I had forgotten about the gargantuan breakfasts my mother served, the fresh orange juice and rolls and cold cuts and coffee cakes. It seemed to have grown larger over the years; now there were four kinds of cheese, not just Liederkranz, and jelly doughnuts and salami and Westphalian ham and Canadian bacon. There were even the cold lobster tails from the night before.

“It’s a feast!” said Doug.

“Oh,” said Dad happily, “Ruthie takes after her mother. Miriam is a wonderful cook.”

Doug looked at me, a quick glance of compassion that thrilled me to the tips of my toes. We were in this together. Mom handed each of us a glass of fresh orange juice and said, “We waited for you.”

“I know about this,” said Doug as he took it. He reached over to hit Dad’s glass with his own. “Cheerio,” he said. “Have a nice day.” Dad beamed.

I suddenly remembered Wilbur Wright. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I cried.

“I guess it never came up,” said Dad mildly.

“But it would have been such a good thing to brag about!” I said. “My friends would have been so thrilled.”

“I never thought of that,” Dad admitted, setting down his slice of bread. “I didn’t know you’d be interested. I’m sorry.” He seemed genuinely contrite. “He came to Berlin in 1909 and everybody went to see the American demonstrate his new flying machine. My parents were sitting up on the dais with the dignitaries, but I had to stand in the back with my English governess. How I hated her! When Mr. Wright asked for a volunteer to fly with him I simply sneaked away from Miss.” He grinned with delight, remembering. “The airplane was just a flimsy thing …”

“Ernst,” said my mother suddenly, “remember that you promised to fix the bathroom door this afternoon.”

“… there were no seats, it was all wing,” my father continued as if she had not spoken. “Wilbur Wright lay in the middle, operating the levers. His assistant looked at me, decided I was light enough, and strapped me in across from him. I was delighted. We swooped over the crowd, not very high, so I heard my mother when she screamed. Imagine how she must have felt, looking up and seeing me flying over her head!”

“What happened next?”

“Oh,” said Dad, “we landed.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, not quite. My parents took me home and while my mother fired the governess my father took me upstairs and gave me the only spanking I ever got.”

He took a big mouthful of coffee and added, “It was worth it. Unfortunately they hired another English governess, and she was worse than the first!” He turned to my mother. “Yes, darling,” he said patiently, “I’ll fix the bathroom door.” He smiled shyly in Doug’s direction and added, “Perhaps Doug will help me?”

Doug fixed the door while Dad stood by making admiring sounds. I felt useless, restless, and inexplicably irritable. I roamed the house, picking things up and putting them down. Mom had gone off to run errands and Doug and Dad were in the book-lined, pine-paneled den Mom liked to call the library.

Looking at them, I wondered why I had not noticed that Doug was built exactly like Dad. They were both slim and tall, and from a distance you couldn’t tell them apart. “You should have seen Doug fix that door!” said Dad. “He’s so fast!”

He was holding a book, running his hands lovingly over the pages. “You see,” he said, “this is Janson in the English monotype. You can tell because the descenders on the
y
are different.” He went to the shelf and pulled down another book. “Look,” he said, holding it out, “this is the Janson in linotype. See the difference?”

Doug ran his hands over the page. He nodded solemnly. “Do you have the first book you designed?” he asked. Dad put his head to one side and considered. He went to the shelves and pulled down a volume. He opened it, caressed the pages, and said apologetically, “It’s not very good.” He held the book out for Doug to see. “So old-fashioned. A few years later I realized that using only the
right-hand page for the title was wasting an opportunity and I began using the left as well.” He was lecturing now, in his element; I remembered, suddenly, that he had been teaching book design at NYU for years.

Dad went to the shelves and began taking down the books he was proudest of:
Ulysses
with the enormous
S
and
The Disenchanted
with its river meandering through the title. He showed Doug the picture of Gertrude Stein on the cover of
Portraits and Prayers
. “It was new technology then,” he said, “I was so excited about being able to print her photograph right on the binding. I wanted to print the back of her head on the back cover so it would be like having the book coming out of her. But Bennett Cerf said it would be too expensive.”

Dad seemed like a new person, full of fire and passion. I had never seen him like this before. Doug kept asking questions. I could not bring myself to join them, but every time I passed the library I felt more left out.

They talked the whole morning. Dad used so many books to illustrate his points that by the time Mom got home, honking loudly, the library looked as if it had been hit by a cyclone.

We all ran outside to see what Mom was making so much noise about. “Look at what I just found at a yard sale,” she said, pointing to a rickety object sticking out of the back of the car. When we pulled the trunk open we could see a beat-up table covered with many coats of peeling paint and missing a leg. “It only cost five dollars. And you
need
a table in the library.”

“It
needs
a little work,” Dad said, eyeing it dubiously.

“Oh, I’m sure Doug can fix it,” Mom said airily. “Ruthie says he can build anything.”

“Uh, I’ll try,” said Doug.

“I’ll help,” said Dad. “But not until we’ve had lunch. I’m hungry. Why don’t we go out to eat?” I looked at him, startled; Mom was the one who made plans in our family.

“Darling, don’t be silly,” she said. “We still have leftover lobster.”

“I don’t
feel
like eating cold lobster,” said Dad vehemently. “I want to go to that restaurant on the pier and have a decent meal!”

Mom looked stung. She started to say something, changed her mind, and went to fetch her purse.