The Social Climber of Davenport Heights (15 page)

On tables set up all around were the profiles of prospective members, each person or couple had their photograph, résumé and letter of recommendation from the nominating member. Some also had evidence of their business successes, civic leadership or genealogy connections.

On the table with each profile was a beautiful handcrafted antique voting box. They were simple, rectangular, with open sections on either side. These held marbles, black on the left, white on the right. A lid with one small hole covered the center compartment.

The voting boxes were as old as the club itself. Every family in membership had at one time had their name written on a neat white card that fit in the front slot.

The room was nearly empty. Not everyone bothered to vote. No quorum was required. Any number of white marbles was enough to vote a member in. But just one lone black marble meant rejection. Election had to be unequivocally unanimous.

I walked through, dropping white marbles into slots without much consideration. The sight of my own letterhead caught my attention. This was the Brandts’ third try at club membership. Last year Millie had called me three times the day of the party, worried, nervous, wondering if anything had been said about her. She hadn’t mentioned a word this year. Perhaps she had given up. Or she’d gotten afraid to hope.

If Millie and Frank were accepted in the club, they wouldn’t need me anymore. They wouldn’t have to treat me with kid gloves. They wouldn’t have to suck up to me like I was somebody.

It felt strange to me as I stood there looking at their picture and the carefully worded family histories and personal biographies. How hard they had tried to appease the esoteric tastes of the club membership. How brave they were to put themselves out again, after twice being rejected.

They wanted this pretty badly. More than I needed to have them under my thumb? Somehow in the new world of doing good, the joy of being indispensable to their social ambitions had lost a lot of its luster.

I picked up a white marble, slipped it through the little hole in the lid of the box and smiling, walked away.

It counts as a five-pointer easily, I assured myself.

The next few days were as carefully orchestrated and as skillfully staged as if we’d all memorized our scripts.

David was endlessly available. He spent hours talking with Brynn about school, working with her on the jigsaw puzzle, telling her tales about his misspent youth at Harvard.

In return she dutifully played a round of golf with him.

I devoted my time to being the new-millennium version of Donna Reed. I decorated, baked, cleaned up, cooked, cleaned up and baked some more. My lines in this sitcom were limited to things such as:

“Who wants hot popovers?”

By Christmas morning, the shimmer on this shining vision of family life was beginning to dull.

We opened gifts in our pajamas. We had each bought dozens of things, and the boxes and torn wrapping paper piled up around the room. When it was all opened and politely acknowledged, none of us was particularly pleased with what we got.

David had bought me a pair of jewel-encrusted earrings—the type that his mother loved. I had a half-dozen similar pair from other occasions and I never wore any of them.

I got him a little desktop humidor for his office. He thanked me before admitting that he’d given up cigars. A change that I hadn’t noticed.

Brynn’s choices were far better than my own. She’d run up over two thousand dollars on department-store credit cards during her shopping trip to New York. But it was well worth it when David tore through the red and green tissue to find his new gold club.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” he told Brynn.

She rolled her eyes. “Like I couldn’t catch a hint,” she teased. “You’ve mentioned the Ray Cook putter in every conversation since October.”

I realized that I’d heard about it several times myself, but I had never made the connection between what he wanted and what I could give him.

Brynn had visited Elizabeth Arden for my gift, a beautifully presented basket of expensive bath items. She knew what a fan I was of a long soak. The bubble beads were moisturizing, non-allergic and oil-free whirlpool friendly. There was a bath mitt, a bath pillow and a pair of tub-safe champagne glasses. The pampered, self-indulgent Jane I had been in the past would have loved it.

We thanked each other profusely with hugs all around. Then I headed to the kitchen to put together a Christmas breakfast. To my surprise, Brynn followed me.

The pajamas she wore was actually an oversize gray T-shirt that bore the likeness of Monica Lewinsky wearing a white moustache. The caption beneath it read
Not Milk
.

With a welcoming warmth June Allyson would envy, I got her seated at the prep island to watch me chop ingredients for omeletes.

Her bleached-blond hair was pulled back into a messy wad held together with a giant turquoise plastic clip at the crown of her head. Strands escaped on either side of her fresh-washed face, giving her a young, vulnerable appearance.

“So, Mother,” she began “are you still being Lady Bountiful all over town?”

I shrugged a little guiltily.

“I’m involved in a few activities,” I admitted.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “This is not the way you are, Mother.”

She was right, of course. She knew me. But she was wrong, as well. She knew me as I’d always been.

“I want to become a better person,” I told her. “I want to live my life differently.”

Her expression was skeptical.

“And what do you get out of this?” she asked me.

“I’m not sure I get anything out of it,” I said.

“Well, I read something at school that says practicing acts of altruism makes people healthier and happier,” Brynn said.

“Really?” I was surprised.

“I guess there’s got to be some kind of payoff,” Brynn insisted. “Or people would never do it.”

I thought about that for a long moment before I answered. “Maybe they would,” I told her.

“Don’t be naive, Mother,” she said. “Everybody’s out for themselves.”

“No, I don’t think they are,” I told her. “If a man runs into a burning building to save a child and he and the child both die, would it have been better for him to have stayed on the sidewalk.”

“It would have been smarter,” she said. “He would have been alive.”

“But could he have lived with the memory of that child’s screams in his ears?”

“Eww, you’re getting morbid,” Brynn complained.

“There is no guarantee the good things we do always turn out well for us,” I told her. “And when we do good, the world
around us doesn’t suddenly become a visibly better place. But doing it anyway, I guess, is the real challenge.”

Brynn leaned back in her chair and looked at me, puzzled.

“Is this for real, Mom?”

I laughed.

“Are you still visiting that old man every chance you get?”

“Chester? Yes, I try to see him every week,” I said. “He’s a very interesting man.”

“He encourages your corybantic behavior.”

“Corybantic?”

Brynn hesitated, debating whether or not she wished to elaborate on her statement. She decided to do so.

“Dr. Reiser says that your brush with death has manifested itself in changes reminiscent of a religious-conversion experience. It’s positively manic and this man, Chester, simply exacerbates the whole unstable situation.”

This analysis belittled what had become, for me, a very important aspect of my life. And she made Chester sound like some sort of wild-eyed cult-figure swami.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with my wanting to be a kinder person,” I said. “I want to be a more caring citizen, an eager volunteer, a more understanding parent. Those are good things.”

“Look, Mother,” she said, her expression long-suffering. “I am not opposed to your newfound social conscience. I’m sure Dr. Reiser is right—at your time of life you undoubtedly need validation and purpose. But leave me out of it, okay? You’ve had eighteen years to play mommy to me. For the first half of that you wouldn’t let me out of your sight, and in the second half, you could hardly bear the sight of me. I’m finally on my own now and I don’t want any of your last-minute largesse.”

“I just love you and want to help you,” I told her.

Brynn’s jaw was set stubbornly. “Help, unsolicited, is intrusion,” she said. “You’ve tried to see that I’ve had all the things that
you
always wanted. The problem is, those have never been the things that
I’ve
wanted. Now you want to be Claire Huxtable. Okay, but don’t expect me to be an enabler. I have my own life and the less contact I have with you the better.”

David walked through the door all smiles. “How are my two best girls coming with that breakfast?”

I’m not sure what the two of us looked like, but David’s happy expression sobered up immediately.

“We’re almost ready,” I assured him with a smile deliberately bright. “If you and Brynn want to set the table…”

Breakfast was a mostly silent affair. David did most of the talking, presenting a long and complicated discourse on how the swing plane, an imaginary line from the base of your neck to the ground, is the least understood and appreciated of the five golf fundamentals.

He had the full attention of both myself and Brynn, as neither of us was willing to so much as glance in the other’s direction.

I still had dishes in the sink when Edith and W.D. showed up. They were invited for a late holiday dinner at three o’clock, but apparently they couldn’t stay away. They had seen even less of Brynn than we had and monopolized her time for the rest of the day.

That was all right with me. I knew that only time could lessen the sting of the words we’d spoken. And with Brynn involved with her grandparents, I could focus my attention on creating the perfect holiday meal. I’d had the goose and cranberry dressing catered, of course, but there were plenty of salads and vegetable dishes for me to spend the day on.

By three-thirty we were sitting at the dining table, festive with Christmas-tree Spode. David secured the camera on its tripod
and set the timer so that we could all be happy and smiling around the table at the same time. The light from the flash had barely faded before the mood around the table darkened.

My father-in-law said grace, evoking a generalized thankfulness that seemed perfunctory, as if our blessings were not heaven-sent but personally acquired. Still, he asked for more in the coming year—good health, a safe home and the family together. My thoughts drifted to Chester; alone today, he had none of those things. If I was going to expend energies on doing good, that wonderful man should certainly be on the receiving end of those efforts.

W.D. finished his prayer with a hearty amen. David seconded it before rising to his feet. With good humor and exaggerated ceremony, he began carving the bird.

I was smiling when I glanced over at Edith and caught her surveying the napkins and place settings with a critical eye.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Oh no, not wrong exactly,” she said. “You know, on Oprah’s holiday table, she chose to mix and match the colors and patterns.”

“Really? Is she trying to be Martha Stewart now?”

“Of course not!” Edith sounded vaguely insulted. “Martha Stewart is so…well, she’s not one of
us—
like Oprah.”

It was truly astonishing that Edith would choose to identify with the populist rather than the patrician, but I smiled politely, unwilling to contradict her.

“By mixing the colors and patterns, the presentation is so much more cozy and reflective of family,” she continued, critiquing my table. “This is so…well, so cold.”

“The ivory tablecloth was a wedding present,” I pointed out. “From the Coburns. It’s been on our table every Christmas for the last twenty years.”

“Hettie Coburn, God rest her soul, never had a smidgen of good taste in her little finger,” Edith said.

Brynn touched the tablecloth as if contact with it was distasteful. “It’s older than I am,” she said, voicing disbelief.

“Fine household goods become more valuable as they age,” I told her.

Edith tutted and shook her head. “Things change,” she said. “Styles change.”

“Tradition is important.”

“Not if it’s boring,” Edith countered.

“And this tablecloth is boring,” Brynn said a little too pointedly. “I suppose I’m going to get it when you die. That’s one of the downsides of being the only child, you inherit all your parents’ crap.”

Edith tutted lightly, but corrected her, as well. “These are belongings, dear, not
crap
.”

“Whatever,” Brynn responded, unwilling to antagonize her grandmother. “Anyway, I promise to give this to the thrift store.”

Edith giggled girlishly, obviously tickled with my daughter’s cutting humor. I was not particularly amused.

David began the dinner conversation by giving us a shot-by-shot description of his golf game with Brynn. He had obviously enjoyed playing with her, though he clearly felt that she had much room for improvement. Just as he got about midway through the course, his father interrupted him.

“Did you see yesterday’s editorial page?” W.D. asked abruptly.

David was momentarily taken aback. But recovered quickly enough to shrug and reply, “Not much news.”

That was what David always answered. He rarely even looked at the newspaper. More often than not, I was the first
to open the paper, quickly scanning the style section as I put it in the recycle bin.

W.D. apparently didn’t require any feedback.

“It’s bad enough that the media tilt every news story toward a liberal bias, but now, right at Christmastime, they play Scrooge to a federal tax cut.”

“They came out against it?” David asked.

“Oh, they say they’re neutral, not going to take a position on the issue,” W.D. explained. “But then they go and give half a column on the editorial page to that damn empty-headed bleeding heart, Scott Robbins. He’s mad because the top income brackets get the biggest part of the cut.”

The man’s name caught my attention. I looked up.