American Wife

  Every evening, the grace my father recited before we ate was “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever.” Then the rest of us said “Amen.” That night, as soon as we’d raised our bowed heads, my father said, “My concern about Alice traveling to Chicago with you, Mother, is the imposition it creates for Gladys, so I’ve called and made a reservation for you both to stay at a hotel called the Pelham. You’ll be my guests for the week.”

  As if she, too, were hearing this offer for the first time, my mother exclaimed, “Isn’t that generous of Daddy!” In a normal voice, she added, “Alice, pass the creamed broccoli to your grandmother.”

  “My colleague Mr. Erle used to live in Chicago,” my father said. “According to him, the Pelham is a very fine place, and it’s in a safe neighborhood.”

  “You’re aware that Gladys has an enormous apartment with several spare bedrooms?” It was hard to tell whether my grandmother was irritated or amused.

  “Granny, we just don’t know Mrs. Wycomb the way you do,” my mother said. “We’d feel forward presuming on her.”

  “Doctor,” my grandmother said. “Dr. Wycomb. Not Mrs. And Phillip, you know her well enough to realize she’ll still insist on having us over.”

  “Gladys Wycomb is a doctor?” I said.

  Once again, my parents exchanged a look. “I don’t see that having dinner with her once or twice would be a problem,” my father said.

  “What’s she a doctor of?” I asked.

  All three of them turned toward me. “Female problems,” my mother said, and my father said, “This isn’t appropriate conversation for the dinner table.”

  “She was the eighth woman in the state of Wisconsin to earn her medical degree,” my grandmother said. “I don’t know about you, but as someone who can hardly read a thermometer, I take my hat off to that.”

  I HAD GROWN up hearing Gladys Wycomb’s name—given my grandmother’s biannual journeys, Gladys Wycomb was, in my mind, less a person than a destination, faraway yet not entirely unfamiliar—but it was only with the introduction of my own trip to Chicago that I realized how little I knew about her. A few hours later, my mother came to say good night while I was reading an Agatha Christie novel in bed, and I asked, “Why doesn’t Dad like Dr. Wycomb?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say he doesn’t like her.” My mother had been standing over me and had already kissed my forehead, but now she sat on the edge of the bed, setting her hand where my knees were beneath the covers. “Dr. Wycomb has known Daddy since he was a little boy, and she can be a bit bossy. She thinks everyone should share her opinions. I guess you wouldn’t remember her visits here because the first was when you were just a baby, and the next one might have been when you were four or five, but there was something that happened on the second visit, a discussion about Negroes—should they have rights, and that sort of thing. Dr. Wycomb was very keen on the subject, as if she wanted us to disagree with her, and we just thought, for heaven’s sakes, there aren’t any Negroes in Riley.” This was literally true, that not one black person lived in our entire town. I’d seen black people—as a child, I’d once been captivated as we drove by a restaurant outside which stood a mother, father, and two little girls my age in pink dresses—but that had been in Milwaukee.

  “Do you dislike her?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. No. She’s a formidable woman, but I don’t dislike her, and I don’t think Daddy does, either. It’s more that we all realized it might be simpler for Granny to go there than for Dr. Wycomb to come here.” My mother patted my knee. “But I’m glad they’re friends, because I know Dr. Wycomb was a real comfort to your granny after your grandfather died.” This had happened when my father was two years old; his own father, a pharmacist, had had a heart attack one afternoon at work and dropped dead at the age of thirty-three. Just the idea of my father as a two-year-old pinched at my heart, but the idea of him as a two-year-old with a dead father was devastating.

  My mother stood then and kissed my forehead a second time. “Don’t stay up too late,” she said.

  THOUGH MY CULTURAL enrichment had been the justification for our trip, the train had scarcely left the Riley station when it emerged that my grandmother’s overriding goal in Chicago was to buy a sable stole from Marshall Field’s. She’d seen an advertisement for it in Vogue, she confided, and she’d written a letter to the store asking them to save one in size small.

  “If I’d been clever, I’d have ordered it a month ago and worn it to church on Christmas Eve,” she said.

  “Does Dad know you’re buying it?”

  “He’ll know when he sees me in it, won’t he? And I’ll look so ravishing that I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.” We were sitting side by side, and she winked. “I have some savings, Alice, and it’s not a crime to treat yourself. Now, let me put some lipstick on you.”

  I puckered my mouth. When she was finished, she held up my chin and gazed at me. “Beautiful,” she said. “You’ll be the belle of Chicago.” Personally, I did not consider myself beautiful, but in the last few years, I had begun to suspect that I was probably pretty. I stood five feet five, with a narrow waist and enough bosom to fill out a B-cup bra. My eyes were blue and my hair chestnut-brown and shiny; I wore it chin-length and curled toward my cheeks with a wispy fringe of bangs. Being attractive felt, more than anything, like a relief—I imagined life was harder for girls who weren’t pretty.

  Our train ride was just over two hours, and at Union Station in Chicago, we were met by a woman I did not recognize at first as Dr. Gladys Wycomb; absurdly, I think I’d expected her to have a stethoscope around her neck. After she and my grandmother embraced, my grandmother stood next to Dr. Wycomb and set one arm on her back. “A legend in her own time,” my grandmother said, and Dr. Wycomb said, “Hardly. Shall we go have a drink?”

  They seemed to me an unlikely pair of friends, at least with regard to appearance: Dr. Wycomb was a bit heavy in a way that suggested strength, and her handshake had almost hurt. She had short gray hair and wore white cat’s-eye glasses and a black gabardine coat over a gray tweed suit; her shoes were black patent-leather pumps with low heels and perfunctory bows. My grandmother, meanwhile, always proud of her style and slimness (her tiny wrists and ankles were a particular source of pleasure to her), was especially decked out for our city visit. We’d given ourselves manicures the day before, and she’d gone to Vera’s in downtown Riley to have her hair dyed and set. Under a tan cashmere coat, she wore a chocolate-brown wool suit—the collar was velvet, the skirt fell just below her knee—complemented by matching brown crocodile pumps and a brown crocodile handbag. So prized were these accessories that she’d bestowed on them the nickname “my crocs,” and the reference was understood by all other family members; in fact, a few weeks earlier, before we’d crossed our snowy street to get to the Janaszewskis’ Christmas party, I’d been amused to hear my father say, “Mother, I urge you to wear boots outside and change into your crocs at their house.” To meet Dr. Wycomb, I also was dressed up, outfitted in a kilt, green tights, saddle shoes, and a green wool sweater over a blouse; on the collar, I wore a circle pin, even though Dena had recently told me it was a sign of being a virgin.

  Outside the train station was a chaos of people and cars, the sidewalks swarming, the traffic in the street jerking and honking, and the buildings around us were the tallest I had ever seen. As we approached a beige Cadillac, I was surprised when a driver in a black cap emerged from it, took our bags, and opened the doors for us; being a lady doctor was, it seemed, a lucrative profession. The three of us sat in the backseat, Dr. Wycomb behind the driver, my grandmother in the middle, me on the right side. “We need to make a stop, if you don’t mind,” my grandmother said to Dr. Wycomb. “The Pelham at Ohio and Wabash. Phillip got it into his head that Alice and I together would be burdensome to you—you can see that Alice is very unruly and belligerent—so he made us a reservation, which of
course we’ll cancel.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Dr. Wycomb said. “Does he really see me as such a corrupting influence?”

  “We hope that’s what you are!” At this, my grandmother turned and kissed Dr. Wycomb on the cheek. I knew that kiss, the lightness of her lips, the scent of Shalimar that floated ahead of her as she approached. When she’d settled against the seat again, my grandmother said, “Don’t we?” and patted my hand. Unsure what to say, I laughed.

  Dr. Wycomb leaned forward and said, “When your father was a boy, he’d remove all his clothes before making a bowel movement.”

  “Oh, Gladys, she doesn’t want to hear about this.”

  “But it’s instructive. It captures a certain . . . rigidity, I suppose, that Phillip has always shown. He’d remove his clothes, and when he was seated on the john, he’d shut his eyes tightly and press his hands over his ears. That was the only way he could eliminate.”

  My grandmother made a face and fanned the air in front of her, as if mere words had brought the stench of a bathroom into the car.

  “Am I telling the truth, Emilie?” Dr. Wycomb asked.

  “The truth,” my grandmother said, “is overrated.”

  “Your grandmother was my landlady,” Dr. Wycomb said to me. “Has she ever mentioned that?”

  “It was scarcely as formal as you make it sound,” my grandmother said.

  “In medical school, I was poor as a church mouse,” Dr. Wycomb said. “I lived in a terrible attic belonging to a terrible family—”

  “The Lichorobiecs,” my grandmother interrupted. “Doesn’t that sound like the name of a terrible family? Mrs. Lichorobiec felt she’d been wronged by mankind.”

  “She refused to let me keep food in the attic because she said it would attract animals,” Dr. Wycomb said. “She wouldn’t let me keep food in the pantry, either, because she said there wasn’t space. This was nonsense, but what could I do? Luckily, your grandmother, who lived next door, took pity and invited me to have my meals at their house.”

  “I thought you’d starve otherwise,” my grandmother said. “I’ve always been slender, but Gladys was positively skeletal. Just a bag of bones, and big dark circles under her eyes.”

  “A bag of bones,” Dr. Wycomb repeated, and chortled. She leaned forward again, and when our eyes met, she said, “Can you imagine?” In fact, I’d been thinking the same thing, but I smiled in what I hoped was a neutral and unrevealing way. “And then your poor grandfather died,” she continued. “What year was that, Emilie? Was that ’24?”

  “It was ’25.”

  “And your grandmother was ready to move, but I said, ‘Let’s think this through. If I’m champing at the bit to get away from the Lichorobiecs, and you’d just as soon stay in this house where you’re all settled . . . ’ And so I became your grandmother’s tenant, and we had some wonderful times.”

  “When the Depression hit, you can bet I was thankful to have Gladys,” my grandmother said. “Being a widow, I certainly couldn’t have gotten by on my salary at Clausnitzer’s. Speaking of spending beyond your means”—she pulled the Vogue ad from her purse and unfolded it—“have you ever seen more gorgeous sable?”

  Dr. Wycomb laughed. “Alice, your grandmother is the only person in this country who became less frugal following the Depression.”

  “If it’s all about to vanish at any moment, why not have some fun? And tell me that’s not stunning. The gloss on it, it’s absolutely—Mmh.” My grandmother shook her head appreciatively.

  “Are you a clothes horse as well, Alice?” Dr. Wycomb’s voice was laced with affection for my grandmother.

  “Oh, she’s far less shallow than I am,” my grandmother said. “Straight A’s every semester—imagine my disappointment.” In fact, while my parents did not seem to have strong feelings about whether I attended college, my grandmother was the one who’d told me that doing so would give me a leg up.

  “Is that right?” Dr. Wycomb said. “All A’s?”

  “I got an A-minus in home ec,” I admitted. The reason why was that on the final project, for which Dena, Nancy Jenzer, and I were partners, we had prepared Hawaiian meatballs in class, and Dena dropped the bowl of Oriental sauce on the floor.

  “Are you interested in the sciences?” Dr. Wycomb asked me, but before I could answer, we’d pulled over in front of a maroon awning that said THE PELHAM on it in white cursive.

  “Gladys, you stay here and we’ll just be a moment,” my grandmother said. “Alice, come in with me.”

  Although we left our suitcases in the car, it wasn’t until we were inside that I fully understood: We weren’t, as my grandmother had claimed to Dr. Wycomb, canceling our reservation. We were checking in, then walking back out and riding away in Dr. Wycomb’s car. My grandmother did not explain this to me, but when the woman behind the reception desk said, “A view of the lake would cost you just six dollars more a day,” my grandmother replied, “We’ll be fine in the room we have.” She also said we wouldn’t need a porter. I was not a person who openly challenged others, and besides, I considered myself an ally of my grandmother. That was why, after we’d retraced our steps through the Pelham’s dim lobby and climbed back in the car, I said nothing when she told Dr. Wycomb, “All taken care of, and they didn’t give us a bit of trouble.” I couldn’t understand the reason for our double deception—lying to my father about where we were staying, lying to Dr. Wycomb about canceling the reservation—but I knew that good manners meant accommodating the person you were with. My grandmother assumed my loyalty, and this, surely, is the reason she got it.

  IN THE TRAIN station, when Dr. Wycomb had suggested having a drink, I’d imagined she meant at a restaurant, but instead, we drove to her apartment on Lake Shore Drive, then rode an elevator to the seventh floor; an elevator operator wore a uniform not unlike the driver’s and nodded once, saying “Dr. Wycomb” just before pressing the button. With no additional exchange of words, we rose, and when the elevator stopped, we stepped into a hallway lined with gold fabric for wallpaper—not glittery gold but subtly shiny brocade with unshiny fleurs-de-lis appearing at tasteful intervals.

  The elevator operator carried our bags inside the apartment. The room where I was to stay featured twin beds separated by a white marble table, and on the table sat a lamp with a large base of raspberry-colored ribbed glass; also, there was an actual suitcase stand on which the operator set my suitcase. At first I’d thought to decline when the man had offered to carry our bags, but when my grandmother had accepted, I had, too. Then I wondered if she ought to tip him, which she didn’t. Her room, connected to mine by a bathroom we’d share, had a canopy bed, the canopy itself silvery-blue silk shantung gathered in the center around a mirror the size of a Ritz cracker.

  In the living room was a mix of modern and old-fashioned funiture: two low, geometric white couches, an antique-looking gold-leaf chair, a revolving walnut bookcase, and many prints and paintings, some of them abstract, hung close together on the walls. Dr. Wycomb asked a maid in a black dress and a white apron for a Manhattan. My grandmother held up her index and middle fingers: “And two old-fashioneds.”

  Dr. Wycomb glanced at me through her cat’s-eye glasses. “Would you prefer a hot cocoa, Alice?”

  “She’ll take an old-fashioned,” my grandmother said. To the maid, she said, “With brandy, not whiskey.”

  “Oh, Myra knows.” Dr. Wycomb laughed. “Don’t forget, I’m from Wisconsin, too, Emilie.” When the maid left the room, Dr. Wycomb said, “Myra and I have quite a rivalry going. She’s a White Sox fan, while I root for the Cubs. Do you follow baseball, Alice?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “We’ll convert you yet. Last season, I’m afraid Myra had more to gloat about, but with Ron Santo, the Cubs just might have a chance this year.”

  When Myra returned with the drinks, my grandmother held up her glass and said, “Gladys, I’d like to propose a toast. To you, my dear, for being a world-class hostess and a
true friend.”

  Dr. Wycomb raised her own glass. “And I turn it back and say to both of you—to the Lindgren women, Emilie and Alice.”

  The two of them looked at me expectantly. “To baseball,” I said. “To 1963.”

  “Hear, hear.” Dr. Wycomb nodded emphatically.

  “To a wonderful time together in Chicago,” my grandmother said.

  The three of us clinked our glasses.

  DR. WYCOMB, IT turned out, had taken several days’ vacation to be our hostess. Our first order of business was for my grandmother to acquire her sable stole, which, as by then I had intuited would happen, Dr. Wycomb paid for with no discussion. Over the next several days, we bundled up and toured the city together, visiting the Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium (I was appalled and transfixed by a ten-foot alligator), and the Joffrey Ballet, where we took in an afternoon performance of La Fille Mal Gardée and where Dr. Wycomb, I observed, fell deeply asleep. At the Prudential building, my stomach dropped as we rode the elevator forty floors—when the building had opened in 1955, its elevators had been the world’s fastest—and on the forty-first-floor public observation deck, I thought how much my father would have enjoyed the view. Even though I wore a hat, scarf, and mittens, it was unbearably cold in the wind, and I stayed outside under a minute before retreating. My grandmother and Dr. Wycomb did not venture onto the observation deck at all. In the evenings, we ate heavy dinners prepared and served by Myra: braised veal chops with prunes, or lamb and turnips.

  That Sunday, Dr. Wycomb went to the hospital to check on her patients, and after she’d left the apartment, my grandmother and I caught a cab to the Pelham. We climbed the steps to the third floor—the building was five stories, with no elevator—and found in our room a double bed and not much else. Breathing heavily from the stairs, my grandmother threw back the coverlet, mussed the sheets, filled a glass with water from the bathroom sink, and set the glass on the windowsill. Then she stood at the window, which looked onto the gray backside of another building. It was seven degrees that day and so overcast I was tempted to lie on the bed and take a nap. “I’m being a little silly, aren’t I?” my grandmother said.