* * *
A week later we took the children to Cumberland Falls, first to hike in the woods, then wade and splash and climb over the rocks at the base of the falls.
On the long drive home again in clean clothes, their bodies dry, their tummies full of the picnic lunch we’d had afterward, Patricia softly began a song she’d learned in summer camp. I stole a glimpse of her over my shoulder, reclining there in her corner of the backseat, eyes half closed, her voice hitting every high note. And Tyler, occasionally recognizing a tune, would sometimes sleepily join in.
Patrick and I exchanged smiles. What I would give to bottle this moment forever, I thought, if only to celebrate the fact that my children-of-a-tone-deaf-mother could, miraculously, sing. And how that pleased their grandfather, who was already giving Patricia piano lessons.
Maybe this day would be even more precious than the day at the orchard, I thought. But then, what about Tyler’s performance at the day-care center he occasionally attended—the boys dressed up as bees, the girls as flowers? As they’d lined up to recite the bee poem for their parents, Tyler had seen us in the audience and stood there smiling his shy, delighted little smile, waving one small hand slowly in front of him, oblivious of his classmates reciting in chorus.
There were so many of these moments that could never be captured accurately, even on the camcorder, only in the heart.
* * *
As much as I loved my children and enjoyed being with them, I also felt torn when I saw other people getting on with their careers, and then I doubted both my ability to advance in my profession and my sincerity as a mother. How could there be any question which was more important?
Sometimes I thought of Pamela and wondered if she had any problems balancing the various facets of her life. She was advancing in her job and seemed to have plenty of time for her friends. Her dad had remarried, and that was going well. Still, with a mom like Pamela’s, even with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were worries I probably knew nothing about.
As for Gwen, Charlie had moved to Baltimore and found a place for them to live. And Gwen got married without any of her friends present. She told us about it later. Her grandmother, now a centenarian, was in kidney failure, and the one thing she had wanted was to see her granddaughter married.
So on a Sunday that Gwen had off, close relatives had gathered in the Wheeler home. Granny had been wheeled into the living room and carried to a recliner. And Gwen, in a white, filmy, floor-length dress and a bridal veil that her grandmother had worn, said her vows in front of the fireplace with Charlie, who, Gwen said, recited his with tears in his eyes, never letting go of her hands.
“We took pictures,” Gwen said, and then they had a good old Southern dinner that Granny would have loved if she could have eaten it. But she sat there enjoying the people and the music until she fell asleep. “I’m so glad she lived to see me married, because she died the following week.”
That’s Gwen. She has no trouble figuring out her priorities. A month later her parents gave a reception for her and Charlie so they could celebrate with friends. About a hundred invitations went out to come celebrate with the Wheelers at the Cosmos Club in DC, where Mrs. Wheeler was a member.
We all came bearing gifts to make up for the shower Gwen never had, the bachelorette party that never was, the church wedding that wasn’t there. And for a woman who had been in medical school practically all her life, it seemed, Gwen sure remembered how to dance.
She had the most shapely legs of the four of us, and in the white filmy dress with the swishy skirt she’d worn for her vows, she whirled and swiveled like a college freshman as we applauded and cheered from the sidelines.
Charlie, only an inch or two taller than Gwen, was almost a one-man show in himself. He had taught ballroom dancing at an Arthur Murray studio part-time to put himself through college and grad school, and he outdid Gwen in the rumba. But it was when they did the tango that we knew Gwen hadn’t spent all her nights in medical school studying.
They flew off to Hawaii for a five-day honeymoon, and Liz, Pam, and I helped the Wheelers take all the gifts back to their house and do whatever else her would-be bridesmaids might have done to be helpful.
“Three down, one to go,” we told Pamela.
“It’ll never happen,” she said.
* * *
Patrick, too, was advancing. He’d been offered a position in a nonprofit branch of IBM. He would be based in Bethesda, only a short distance away, but there would be more travel involved. No matter where he worked, it seemed as though he was bound for a promotion every year. That was Patrick.
We talked about the job offer before he decided. I loved living in my old area—only twenty minutes from Dad and Sylvia, a couple hours away from Les and Stacy. We weren’t far from Liz and Moe or Gwen and Charlie, and I could see Val and Abby when they came back to visit in Maryland. I was grateful that Patrick had taken a job here to begin with and had known in my heart of hearts that it might not last forever.
But if Patrick accepted this new job offer, there was the possibility that he would be transferred later on, and how could I give up this house I loved? In any case, there would be more travel, and he might be gone one week out of every four. How would I feel about that? How would he? And how would it affect the children?
I played it over and over in my mind. I knew that Patrick could have had at least two other jobs when he joined the Washington think tank before we married. A man with his scholarship and linguistic abilities could almost write his own ticket, but he had taken a job near my hometown because he knew it meant a lot to me, especially once we had children. To be away so much, though?
“How much do you really want this job, Patrick?” I asked. “On a scale of one to ten?”
“Eleven,” he said. “But I would do everything in my power to be home for the big occasions and to make my time home count.”
“Then take it,” I said. And he did.
* * *
I’d lie in bed sometimes in the mornings when Patrick had an early meeting, watching him loop his tie in front of the mirror. The same slim body I’d always known, the orange hair. I knew his profile as well as I knew every little mole on his body.
I’d smile to myself, thinking how this was the same Patrick who used to hold my hand as we walked around the block on a summer evening back in sixth and seventh grades. Who French-kissed me once in a school broom closet. And here he was in our bedroom, the father of my children. He didn’t play the drums anymore—he’d sold them after college—but he still liked to run, and that’s how he stayed slim.
After having two children, I wasn’t as slim. On my thirtieth birthday I weighed twelve pounds more than I had when we married, but I think I still looked pretty good. I had a great haircut, kept my makeup fresh, my clothes in good shape.
In the years I was home with the children, there was no end to all the things I wanted to do with them before they started school, and one of the things was a visit to the fantastic new elephant enclosure at the National Zoo, with woods and ponds and acres to roam.
Liz had come along with her three girls, and we’d managed to visit the animal each child specifically wanted to see—the giraffes, the tigers, the monkeys—while Liz and I felt closer to the maternal elephants, patiently herding their young.
We had come to the end of the spectators’ walkway, and were getting ready to leave for home when I caught sight of a woman staring at me. After turning away self-consciously, I glanced back again and saw her mouth, which had turned down slightly at the corners, stretching into a smile. She looked to be a sturdy thirtysomething in a National Zoo uniform.
I stopped fussing with Tyler’s backpack and straightened, returning her smile. Something familiar . . .
“Rosalind!” I cried as she came toward me, and we hugged.
When I backed away from her and noticed the “Elephant Trails” pin on her shirt, I grasped her arms.
“You did it!” I cried.
/> “Yep. Not only do I get to work in an elephant house, but I’m part of the planning for raising herds of Asian elephants here in DC.”
“It’s beautiful,” put in Liz, and I introduced them.
“Rosalind Rodriquez is an old friend from long ago,” I said. “I’m surprised we even recognized each other. I knew her back in grade school.”
“And these are your kids?” Rosalind asked, grinning at Patricia and Tyler.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m married to my elephants, I guess. Right now I’m starting my shift, but e-mail me here at the zoo. We’ll catch up.”
“Of course I will. It was so good to see you, Roz.”
“You too. Take care,” she said, and disappeared behind an Employees Only door.
All the way home I entertained the children with tales of Rosalind—all the trouble she got into when she came over.
“She really buried you in a snow cave once?” Tyler asked.
“I guess we could call it ‘accidentally on purpose,’ ” I told him, “but it didn’t keep me from missing her after we‘d moved. Wow! The Elephant House! Good for Rosalind!”
I wasn’t the first mother to discover that everything I’d ever planned ended up taking twice the time I’d expected, of course. But I also had a “bucket list” of things I hoped to accomplish when the kids were down for their naps: a scrapbook for each child’s primary years; a quilt I had started some time ago; all twenty of the novels on my list, beginning with Dostoyevsky and including D. H. Lawrence and Philip Roth. I wanted to keep up with my professional journals and possibly take a yoga class. . . .
Just remember that the children come first, I’d tell myself every so often, and not always successfully. D. H. Lawrence will always be waiting, but you might get only one chance to look at the spider-web Tyler found.
* * *
With Patrick’s new job, however, there were more trips overseas, and though he kept his promise and tried to be home for major events, there were so many times—just ordinary times—that I wanted him to be there to hold me, stroke me, talk to me, make love to me. But he wasn’t.
“Sweetheart, you know I want to be here with you as much as you want me to,” he said once as he packed for a trip to Montreal.
“Do you?” I asked. “You fly all around the world, Patrick, and meet fascinating people, and then you come home to meat loaf and car repairs and fixing Tyler’s bike.”
“Sometimes that’s the best kind of life to come back to,” he said, and leaned over the bed to kiss me before he left.
I knew what he meant—a refuge, a place to be himself—but I didn’t want him to see us as dull. Me, in particular. And if I dug even deeper than that, I worried he might find one of his business associates more interesting and attractive. “It’s forever, Alice,” he had whispered on our wedding day. But don’t most couples believe that when they marry? Don’t they all think that the way they feel about each other then is the way they’ll feel forever?
It was a combination, I guess, of facing my early thirties and seeing a photo of the nonprofit group Patrick was working with—seven men and two women. Attractive women, beautifully dressed.
“Patrick,” I asked him once, “How would you rate me on a scale of one to ten?” We were in bed together and had made love.
I could tell by his voice that he was smiling. “In what department?” he asked, lazily stroking my breasts.
“Uh . . . desirability,” I said.
“Hmmm. Eleven?”
“Be serious.”
“Because?”
“Because I really want to know. You meet exciting, worldly women in gorgeous clothes, and then you come home to me in jeans and a sweatshirt. You’re away a lot, you know.”
“But you always look great in your jeans and sweatshirts,” he said. “Besides, with Tyler in day care, you’re a pretty girl alone all day, and the men you meet must find that awfully appealing.” He gave me a playful shake.
I traced one finger down his cheek and around his ear. “I’m not a girl anymore, Patrick.”
“I like you just the way you are,” he said, and we went to sleep after that, but it didn’t really answer my question.
20
CRISIS
Once Patricia was in first grade, we discussed enrolling Tyler in preschool and my going back to work. While our daughter was a full-steam-ahead kind of child—build it, play it, ride it, float it—Tyler’s head was in the clouds, and his imagination was most active when he was quiet.
He was shy around other children, and while we were ready to accept him as the little introvert of the family, we also felt that being with other children more might make kindergarten a bit easier for him.
At the same time, I longed for adult conversation—about students, not sandwiches—and didn’t want to lose the edge in my professional life. So we decided I would return to work full-time, and each morning either Patrick or I would first drop Patricia Marie off at her elementary school, where there was a before- and an after-school program for children of parents who worked. Then we would drive Tyler to his preschool class at the Y.
One morning Patricia, true to form, decided she didn’t want to go to the before-school program. Never mind that only two days before, she had loved it.
“It’s borrr-ing!” she said, folding her arms across her chest, refusing to get out of the car.
Seeing his sister object, Tyler became weepy and clingy. “I don’t like it either,” he said of his own preschool.
I tried the objective approach. “That may be true sometimes, but the other day you told me about all the fun you were having. There are games and snacks and stories and—”
“The crackers are awful!” Patricia said, her lower lip jutting out. “They taste like paste.”
“Well, whether you’re bored or not, I’m afraid you two will have to do the best you can,” I said. “Both your dad and I work, and I have to get to my job early.”
Patricia got out of the car then, scowling, and Tyler was sniffling when we got to the Y.
“It’s not fair!” he said. “You don’t have to work, Mommy! You didn’t used to. You used to stay home with me.”
That night after the children were in bed, I said to Patrick, “Why is it that everything I do for myself makes me feel guilty? You go off each morning to work you love, but when I try it, I get a ton of guilt.”
“Because you’re their mom, that’s why,” Patrick said affectionately.
“Well, I want somebody else to be Mom for a change. I want to go to exotic places and meet fascinating people. I want to fly around the world without feeling guilty.”
“I could probably ask to be demoted to maintenance supervisor, and you could apply for an exchange counselor position for a year,” he said, not at all helpful.
“You know what I mean, Patrick,” I said sulkily. “I’m tired of feeling guilty.”
“Then don’t,” he said. “Listen, Alice, you stayed home with the kids for six years when they were small, and you were a good mom then. You’ll be an even better mom if you do something for yourself now. If you don’t, you can be sure Patricia will call you on it when she’s a teenager and ask why you sacrificed your own dreams.”
I smiled at him. “Exactly what I wanted to hear,” I said. “What made you think of that?”
“I just didn’t want to have to apply for maintenance supervisor,” he told me.
* * *
Aunt Sally died that winter. Carol had called to say that her mother had had a massive stroke and was in intensive care. Dad and I were making arrangements to fly to Chicago when Carol called again to say that Aunt Sally was dead.
Next to Sylvia, I guess Aunt Sally was as close to a mother to me as anyone, because I have only a few memories of my own mom. And even the few I have get mixed up now and then with memories of Sally.
Patrick was in San Francisco, so Sylvia said she would come over and take care of the children, and Dad and I flew out together. Les a
nd Stacy would meet us there.
“It’s too bad it takes a funeral for you and me to find some time just to be alone together,” Dad said as the seat belt light came on and we prepared for takeoff. “How are things going, honey?”
“Busy,” I told him, and related all the things we were doing. “Patrick’s promised us a trip to Quebec this summer. He says he’s always looking for places the family might enjoy when he travels on business.”
“Now, that sounds wonderful! Sylvia and I are talking about Florence and Venice. She’s always wanted to see Florence again, and we might even get to Rome while we’re at it.”
“Oh, Dad, I’m so happy for you!” I said. “She’s made such a difference in your life, hasn’t she?” Dad beamed, and remembering Sylvia’s old flame, I got up the nerve to ask, “Does anyone know what became of Jim Sorringer?”
“He married,” Dad told me.
“The P.E. teacher he was dating after you married Sylvia?”
“No. He went back to California, took a position there, and married the woman he’d met while he was working on his Ph.D.”
“A woman he’d been seeing all the while he was supposed to be serious about Sylvia, I’ll bet,” I said.
“Now, honey, we don’t know that,” said Dad, and laughed.
* * *
Uncle Milt just wandered around like a lost soul. I guess Aunt Sally was so good at directing other people’s lives that she had also directed his all these years. Carol stayed right by his side through the funeral and made arrangements with neighbors to look in on him every day with an occasional roast chicken or some homemade bread, but we could see it was going to be hard for him.
We all went out to dinner the following evening, and Dad and Les and Stacy took Milt on a shopping trip the day after that to buy him some clothes he needed and restock his refrigerator. Carol and I sorted through Aunt Sally’s things—the personal stuff that Uncle Milt didn’t feel he could handle—her clothes and jewelry, all the things in her closets and drawers.