A FEW DAYS after Kari introduced Julia to her birth mother in the church basement, I got the news from the doctor: I had Hodgkin’s disease.
“Hodgkin’s?” I cried to Jerry as we drove home. “Who the hell is Hodgkin? What makes him think I want his disease?”
“We’re going to beat this, Slip,” he said, clutching the steering wheel so that his knuckles formed little white peaks under his skin. “We are going to beat this.”
Jerry’s a scientist; he believes in facts. If he says something, it must be true.
I’ve completed my course of chemo and my blood counts are what they should be. My doctor says if I’m not in remission, it looks as if I’m headed there. The past couple months have been rough; if I never throw up again, it will be too soon for me. But besides my regained health, there’s been an incredible silver lining to this big black cloud: all my hair fell out. My awful frizzball red hair. I actually preferred being bald; I didn’t have to wake up every morning wondering how I was going to batten down my hair. But then—oh joy, I can hardly stand it—my hair’s started to grow back in, and it’s not frizzy. It’s still red, but no matter—the frizz is gone. The hair that used to evoke pictures of electrocution or a permanent gone terribly, terribly wrong is as unkinky as Prince Valiant’s. Straight and smooth. I can’t believe it. Only about an inch and a half has come in, but I pay more attention to my hair now than a Miss Minnesota contestant. Jerry teases me about my new vanity, but I think anyone who’s lived under a mushroom cloud of hair all her life has a right to spend a little extra time in front of a mirror.
GRANT STAYED AFTERWARD to help me clean up. We’ve always gotten along, but one weekend when I was sick from chemo, he earned extra brownie points by reading aloud our book club selection, all 342 pages of it, pausing only during my trips to the bathroom to throw up.
“Slip, don’t you think it’s about time we plan a road trip?” asked Grant, twirling the last triangle of pita bread in the hummus. “Let’s read a book set in Italy or the Greek isles—I’m getting so sick of winter. And then—Slip, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, my gosh,” I said, and with an armful of dirty dishes, I raced to the kitchen.
“Slip,” said Grant, chasing after me, “you’re not feeling sick, are you?”
I threw the dishes (as much as I could throw them without breaking them) into the sink and wiped my hands on the gingham dish towel that hung on the oven handle.
“Slip,” said Grant, begging for some sort of explanation.
“Oh, Grant,” I said, pulling the brown-paper-wrapped package off the baker’s rack where I’d put it earlier that day and hugging it to my chest. “It’s Flan’s manuscript. It came when I was making the tabouli, and I forgot all about it.”
“Flan’s manuscript? Oh, Slip, how exciting. Open it up so we can start reading it right now.”
Jerry has often said I’m just like a toddler in showing my feelings on my face, and Grant obviously saw that I did not regard his suggestion as a good idea.
He laughed. “For God’s sake, Slip, you look like I just asked you to strip.”
“Well, I . . . I think I’d like to open it up and read it with Jerry.”
“Of course you would,” said Grant, and within minutes he was out the door.
I called Jerry down from his exile in the den (all the husbands beat a hasty retreat when the Angry Housewives meet), asking him to join me in front of the fire for a glass of wine.
There is nothing quite so cozy as an old married couple on a worn corduroy couch, snuggled in front of the fireplace.
“How are you feeling, honey?” asked Jerry, his nose snuffling around in my short, deliciously straight hair.
“Not so good,” I began.
“Slip?” said Jerry, worried.
“Not so good,” I continued, “but great.” I lifted up a pillow under which I’d hidden the package. “Jerry, it’s Flan’s manuscript.”
Jerry sat for a moment, silent. “Flan’s manuscript? Right there in your lap?”
I nodded, sure that my smile was touching my ears.
We exchanged that glorious aren’t-our-kids-something look that parents are sometimes privileged enough to share, and then Jerry nudged me. Hard.
“Well, open it up, for God’s sake, and let’s start reading.”
The fire snapped its fingers, demanding our attention, but we had none to give. Our concentration was totally on the opening of the package.
“Do you want to start or should I?” asked Jerry.
“Maybe you should,” I said, passing him the stack of pages. “I’m too nervous.”
Jerry accepted the manuscript as solemnly as a tribal chief accepting a peace offering and began to read.
“Wow,” I said after he’d read a few lines, “it’s fantastic!”
Jerry chuckled. “I haven’t even finished the first paragraph.”
“You can tell a lot by the first paragraph.”
I snuggled closer to him, and as he began reading again, I closed my eyes, enjoying beyond measure the singular experience of my husband giving voice to our daughter’s.
October 1996
HOST: KARI
BOOK: Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
REASON CHOSEN: “How am I ever going to turn you into honorary Norwegians if you haven’t
read this book?”
“This is the lefsa,” said Kari, handing Slip a tray of Norwegian tortillas. “That’s the krumkakka over there, and I’ve got the smorebrod and cheeses in the fridge.”
“And how are we supposed to drink this aquavit?” asked Slip.
“Straight,” said Kari. “But sparingly.”
She had even planned to wear her Norwegian national costume (she had gotten it when she was seventeen and it still fit) and teach the Angry Housewives a Norwegian drinking song, but the lessons in Norse culture would have to wait: Kari had a more important meeting to attend.
“Kiss Julia for us all,” Slip said as Kari got on her coat.
“I will,” said Kari, “if I can stop kissing her myself.”
ON THE PLANE, Kari thought of the hastily arranged trip she had made all those years ago to pick up the infant her niece had somehow “found” for her. It pleased her that again she was going to San Francisco, only now her baby was twenty-eight years old. Twenty-eight years old. Tears blurred Kari’s eyes as she stared out at the gray wintry sky around her. Because of their estrangement, she had missed out entirely on her daughter’s twenty-eighth year.
She had sent a birthday card, of course, and a dusky rose blazer she had sewn out of a soft wool and lined with cranberry silk. Julia was so easy to sew for—almost a perfect size eight, except that Kari always had to make adjustments for her wide shoulders. She received no acknowledgment of the card or gift, but neither had she received an acknowledgment of any of the dozens of letters she had sent. Until now.
Julia had finally called, finally said the word that Kari had waited nearly a year and a half to hear: “Mom?” She had added bonus words: “I’m so sorry. I love you. Can you come out here?”
If Kari had had a gauge to measure her feelings, it wouldn’t have worked; her happiness and gratitude were off the charts. They had spoken for two hours, laughing and crying as they caught up, and finally Kari had felt brave enough to ask, “What happened? What finally made you call me?”
“Oh, Mommy,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “I kept every letter—I just never opened them. I knew if I did, I’d want you back in my life again, and I just wasn’t ready for that. I was so mad at you and Mary Jo.”
“I am so sorry,” said Kari, and she was; her sorrow was ocean deep, sky high. “How many times have I played that day back in my mind, wishing I hadn’t said anything, wishing that—”
“It’s okay, Mom. I mean, it wasn’t at first, but it is now.”
Kari heard a faint whooshing noise.
“Can you hold on for a sec, Mom? I’m making myself a cappuccino, and if I don’t open the val
ve now, I won’t get any steam.”
Kari waited as the whooshing grew louder, and a moment later Julia was back on the phone.
“So anyway, Jared, Jared Lipinsky—I’ve been seeing him for a couple months, Mom, and well . . . I . . .”
Kari laughed. “My goodness, Julia, are you in love?”
“Yes! Yes, I think so. No, I know so. Oh, Mom, he’s so great; he’s funny and kind. I met him at work; he’s the vice president of creative affairs. He just seems to understand me so well. To the rest of the world I seem pretty together, but he could tell right away that something wasn’t right with me, and when I told him about you he said, ‘I don’t think you can really be happy until you reconcile with her,’ and even though I knew what he was saying was true, I needed a little more time.”
Julia paused and sipped her cappuccino. “Anyway, last night I made the time. Jared was out with some clients and I was all alone in the apartment, so I dragged out the big box I keep in the closet. It’s full of your letters—and that jacket, Mom; thank you, it’s beautiful. Anyway, last night I started opening all the letters up and reading them. By the third I wanted to call you, but it was past eleven here and I didn’t want to wake you up in the middle of the night.”
“You can wake me up anytime you like,” said Kari.
“I’ve got the letters right here, Mom. Let me read you one.” She took another sip of her coffee and Kari heard a slight clink when she set the cup down.
My dear Julia,
I know the chances of you throwing this letter away before you even open it are high, but I will keep sending you these letters in the hopes that you might mistake one for a bill and open it.
It is what keeps me going, Julia: hope. It makes me get up in the morning and turn on the coffee and read the paper and decide that yes, I’ll get on with my day.
Missing you is like having had an arm or leg amputated; I am constantly aware of my loss, but hope makes me think that someday the arm or leg will be reattached.
Three quick breaths rose out of Julia’s throat. “That’s just how I felt, Mom—like a part of me was missing.” Then she continued.
Life goes on, but it is a different life, a life with a hole in it. At book club I listen to Faith tell stories about the museum in Atlanta that hired Beau and the kind of cases Bonnie deals with as a social worker. Merit passes around Reni’s wedding pictures. It was a beautiful wedding, Julia—imagine Merit’s lovely girls as bride and bridesmaids, and when Melody and Jewel and Portia sang, “True Love,” I think we all felt like cavemen (or cave people, as Slip would say) coming across a flowering rosebush. Reni had told me that she asked you to come but you’d said it would be too awkward. “Do you talk to her much?” I asked, so hungry for news of you, even if it was news that you wouldn’t be coming to your old friend’s wedding because you didn’t want to see your mother.
That mark right there is a big teardrop that just splashed on the paper. You’d think I’d learn by now to type these letters so they wouldn’t be so waterlogged.
So when all my friends talk about their children at book club (Audrey brought her new grandson, who’s the biggest baby I’d ever seen—eleven pounds at birth! And guess what—Flannery finished her book and has an agent sending it around!) I listen with happiness and sadness, wishing I could add to the conversation.
But I will one day, Julia. Someday, some way, I will.
Your loving mother,
Kari
There was a long pause, and Kari heard her daughter sipping her cappuccino. It made her wish she had her own cup of coffee.
“I’m really sorry I wasted all this time being mad,” said Julia finally. “It was just so hard to get out of. It was like I was inside this . . . this box of anger without a key. Jared’s helped me a lot, Mom. His own mother died when he was only thirteen, and he told me he could understand my hurt, but he thought I was compounding the hurt by pushing you out of my life. ‘Bring her back in,’ he kept saying. ‘I promise you you’ll feel better if you bring her back in.’ ”
“I like this Jared,” Kari said, her throat full.
“Good, because he’s going to be your son-in-law. Now when’s the soonest you can get out here?”
Kari had gotten on a plane the next day. Staring out the little oval window, she replayed the conversation over and over in her head. When the flight attendant asked her if she wanted chicken or beef, Kari shook her head.
“My daughter and her fiancé are taking me out for dinner!” and from the odd look both her seatmate and the flight attendant gave her, she gathered there may have been a wee bit more enthusiasm in her voice than it would seem the statement called for.
May 1997
HOST: MERIT
BOOK: Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler
REASON CHOSEN: “She’s one of my favorite writers—I feel like her characters could live on my block.”
It was one of Merit’s great pleasures to have introduced to Frank the joys of reading. Unlike Eric, who resented Merit’s attention being taken away by books, Mr. Paradise was made happy by anything that made Merit happy.
When she was pregnant with Portia and reading The Great Gatsby for book club, he asked her to tell him about it, and displayed enough interest that Merit suggested he read the book himself.
His face fell (Merit was struck by how thin angular faces seem to fall farther than round ones) and he said, “I . . . I . . .”
“What is it, Frank?”
“Well,” said Frank, stroking his sideburns with his thumbs, his particular nervous tic, “the thing of it is . . . I don’t read too well. I always jumble up the letters or something.”
“Oh, Frank,” said Merit. They were sitting next to each other on the couch, and to be any closer to him, she would have to climb on his lap, which she did. “You mean you have dyslexia?”
Frank shrugged. “If that’s when you jumble up the letters, that’s what I’ve got.”
“Well, we can get you help for that,” said Merit. “Jewel’s best friend has dyslexia, but she’s been getting special help, and Jewel says she reads like crazy now.”
“Really? I’d sure like to learn to read better.” He stroked Merit’s pregnant belly. “I want to be able to read to the baby.”
And so he met weekly with an earnest young man from the University of Minnesota who never made Mr. Paradise feel ashamed of his inability to distinguish a z from an s or laughed when, for the fourth time in a session, the older man read am as ma. For homework, he prescribed a lot of reading out loud, which Frank chose to do in Merit’s company.
Sometimes he’d get through a chapter without his eyes and head hurting from the effort of descrambling words, and when he couldn’t, he’d hand the book to Merit and say, “Finish it up, will you, honey? I want to find out what happens.”
When Portia was three weeks old, Merit came home from running errands to find Frank holding the baby in one arm and a copy of The Three Little Pigs in the other.
“ ‘Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in,’ ” read Frank.
Setting her purse on the table, Merit laughed. “How’s she liking it?”
“Next to ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ ” said Frank, “I think it’s her favorite.”
Although Frank could (and did, albeit slowly) read his own books, they’d gotten used to the ritual of reading aloud, first to Portia and then, after she fell asleep to themselves, cozying up in the big plush armchair. Frank started off reading, but after one or two pages, he’d hand the book over to Merit, claiming that hearing her read was almost as good as hearing her sing. They usually read whatever book was going to be discussed at AHEB, and when Merit returned from a meeting, Frank would grill her on what the Angry Housewives had thought of the book’s theme or this character’s weakness or that character’s strength.
“Can you believe that next year our book club will have its thirty-year anniversary?” Merit asked Frank as he helped her clean up after a meeting she had hosted.
>
“Thirty years,” said Frank, helping himself to a piece of Faith’s peanut brittle. “Think how many books that is.”
“We’re trying to figure out a big splashy way to celebrate,” said Merit. “Any ideas?”
Frank unlodged a chunk of peanut from between a gold tooth and a regular one. “Hmmm. Maybe something to do with a T-shirt?”
“What?”
“Well, you know how the girls gave us those T-shirts for our fifth anniversary with a picture of us printed inside a heart? Something like that.”
Merit brushed the couch cushions. It was easy to know where Audrey sat during a meeting; she always left behind a telltale trail of crumbs.
“That’s a good idea—I’m sure one of us could dig up a picture taken at a book club.”
“Or what about your books?”
“What do you mean? A picture of the books we’ve read?”
“No, you wouldn’t have space for that. How about a list—you’ve kept track of all your books, haven’t you, Merit? So how about making T-shirts with a list of all the books your club has read?”
“Oh, Frank,” said Merit, setting down a pile of dishes so she could hug her husband. “That’s a great idea.”
“I’ve got another one,” said Frank.
“Can’t it wait till we finish cleaning up?”
“It could, but why should it?”
“You’re right,” said Merit, taking him by the hand and pulling him down on the couch. “Why should it?”
August 1997
HOST: AUDREY
BOOK: Eastward Ha! by S. J. Perelman
HOW MANY TIMES I LAUGHED OUT LOUD WHILE READING THIS: 107
My ex-husband, Paul, died today. When I called my son Bryan in California to tell him the news, he asked me, “Did you feel it?”
“No,” I said. “No, I didn’t have a clue.”
“Wasn’t he important enough to you?” said Bryan, sounding like an accusatory little boy. He drew in a breath of air. “Sorry, Mom. It’s just that you always know the important stuff before it happens. Remember my accident?”