Seeing how Mom looked up at Wally Szalla, blinking and smiling, as if she’d been expecting someone very different, I realized that Wally was probably reminding her of my uncle Fred Eaton, one of Dad’s younger brothers whom we didn’t often see and who had, like Wally, a boyish-battered face and a stocky build. Trust me! Uncle Fred’s warm brown eyes seemed always to be urging.
“Mrs. Eaton, I’ve heard so much about you from your daughter, who adores you. It’s an honor to meet you at last!”
Mom laughed, blushing. “Well. I’m not exactly the Queen of England, Wally. Please call me ‘Gwen.’”
“‘Gwen.’ ‘Gwendolyn.’ A rare beautiful name.”
I’m not sure if it was a coincidence, but Mom had begun listening to WCHF AM-FM recently. Her favorite programs were “No Holds Barred” and “Afternoon Pop Classics.” (“Night Train” came on too late for her. Most evenings, Mom made it a point to read for at least an hour before turning on TV to her favorite cable channel, Animal Planet. She was in bed by nine-thirty.) Wally was cheered by Mom’s enthusiasm for “No Holds Barred” and suggested that Mom come visit the radio station sometime, he’d introduce her to the call-in show hostess whose name was Gloria Silberman. “Gloria would love to meet you, Gwen. She could interview you on the show.”
Mom said, startled, “Interview me? Oh, dear. I don’t think so.”
“But why not? Gloria interviews all sorts of women, not just ‘career’ women.”
Mom shook her head, laughing.
“On the radio? Live? I’d be tongue-tied. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.”
“You won’t know until you try, Gwen, will you? There’s always a first time. I’d never tried my hand at being a D.J. until ‘Night Train’ and as soon as the sound engineer signaled me I was on the air I just started talking. You’d be a natural, Gwen. I’ll call you one of these days. When the weather isn’t so unpredictable. You and Nikki could both appear on ‘No Holds Barred,’ Gloria would love it.”
For much of our dinner in the elegantly spacious candlelit dining room of the Mt. Ephraim Inn, Wally drew Gwen out in a way I had never witnessed. At family gatherings, no one had much bothered with Gwen Eaton, Jon’s wife; but then, no one had much bothered with any of the wives. Conversation was limited to a very few, predictable topics: weather, food, family/neighbor/household problems. But here was Mom talking with Wally Szalla about radio and TV programs they’d liked when they were young, and almost you’d have thought that Gwen Eaton and Wally Szalla were of the same generation. Wally had the uncanny ability to so empathize with others, he seemed to mirror them. He and Mom talked animatedly of Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, “Young” Elvis. Mom spoke of having seen a production of West Side Story in Rochester in 1964, when she was sixteen: “That song ‘I Feel Pretty’ is still in my head! I hear myself singing it sometimes, even now.” Wally asked Mom if she and her husband had enjoyed dancing and Mom said, “Oh, I loved to dance! In high school, I mean. I’d just dance with other girls, mostly. Jon was older, you know—seven years older than me. He was always so serious. His attitude was, ‘Jumping around like a lunatic isn’t my idea of a good time, Gwen.’ But really it was because he didn’t want to try anything he couldn’t already do well, in any public way.”
“Is that it, Mom? That was the reason?”
“The reason why your father didn’t try many things,” Mom said, sighing. Wally had insisted upon pouring a little white wine into her glass, and she’d been sipping at it; something she’d never have done if Clare and I had brought her here. “You see, he didn’t want people ‘looking’ at him. He didn’t want people ‘laughing’ at him. All the Eaton men are like that. Jon needed to be perfect, so he didn’t have to be anxious. Trying new things, being vulnerable to making mistakes, made him very anxious. He needed things to be perfect around him, too. At Beechum, and at home. That was why he was such a reliable employee at Beechum, and, at home, why he kept up home repairs almost before they were needed.” Mom laughed, almost giddily. “My friends complained how their husbands were so slow to get things fixed but not Dad! If the furnace was just ‘acting funny,’ he’d call in the repairman. If there was a single drip from a ceiling, he’d call in the roofer. And remember how upset Dad was every spring at the dandelions in our neighbors’ lawns? Because the fluffy little seeds would blow over onto our lawn, there was no way to keep them out.”
Wally said quickly, “Well, that kind of personality is needed in the world. Otherwise we’d have chaos.”
We were talking so animatedly, with such outbursts of laughter, diners at other tables glanced in our direction, smiling. Mistaking us for a family?
Wally would say afterward, he hadn’t expected my mother to be so young. And vivacious. I thought it was something of an exaggeration, “vivacious,” but it was so, Mom’s skin was glowing, she’d put on lipstick for the occasion, she was wearing a pale green dress of some crinkly-velvety material that brought out the color of her eyes and around her neck was a necklace of small jade stones, I’d found in a thrift shop and given her for one or another birthday. For the occasion, I was wearing a velour top Mom had sewed for me, dark lavender in a tunic style, that fitted me rather loosely; of the items Mom had made me over the years, the tunic tops were the most glamorous. My ears were studded with piercings, my fingers flashed with inexpensive glittery rings. There was a fever in my usually pale-sallow skin. You can always tell when Nikki’s in love girlfriends of mine were given to say and maybe this was so.
Without my wishing it, talk had turned to my “journalism” at the Beacon. Of course, Mom saved every article and interview that appeared under my byline in the paper, and friends and neighbors supplied her with extra clippings, for “Nikki Eaton” was about as famous as anyone was likely to get in Mom’s social circle. Both Mom and Wally were lavish in their praise of my writing which made me want to hide my face in my napkin. “Oh, please!” Mom must have scrutinized my interview with Wally Szalla, which had appeared months ago, for she had questions to ask about it, and one of them was whether the interview had been when we’d met?
“Yes, Mom. That was exactly when we met.”
I reached over, and stroked the back of Wally’s hand. The gesture was affectionate and possessive and not so spontaneous as it appeared but I wanted my mother to see I am serious about this man, this man is special.
For Wally had filed divorce papers, finally. His lawyer and his wife’s lawyer were “negotiating.”
There’d been a difficult time, at Christmas. Wally had felt obliged to spend much of the holiday with his children whom he’d been, as Isabel charged, neglecting. And so we’d had some painful discussions. And I’d been emotional, which wasn’t like me. Or wasn’t the way I wished to be. But now in the New Year 2002 things were much improved. Much!
I was telling my mother about a suggestion I’d made half-seriously to my editor at the Beacon, that I travel to Europe in the summer and write a column for the paper, “Mt. Ephraim Abroad.” It would be comical in tone but serious, too, with travel tips and suggestions. “My editor is enthusiastic, he thinks travel agents will want to advertise in the paper. But he can offer only a ‘limited budget’ and I know what that means.”
Wally said, “I’ll stake you, Nikki. It sounds like a terrific idea to me.”
Mom was smiling at me, uneasily. Any talk of “travel”—“going away from home”—made her uneasy. Impulsively I said, “I’ll take you with me, Mom. We can travel together. We never have, just the two of us. You always did want to see Paris, and Rome, and Daddy was never very enthusiastic.”
Mom shook her head, frowning. No, no!
“Mom, why not?”
“Since what happened at the World Trade Center, I’d be afraid to fly. And I’d be anxious about you flying, too.”
“We’ll go by boat, then. A romantic crossing of about five days.”
It was pure impulse. I was becoming carried away, having had a glass or two of wine in the company o
f the two people who meant more to me than anyone else in the world, who couldn’t help but smile at me indulgently as if Nikki were the bright brash child to be adored, encouraged, and yet sensibly restrained.
“Well, Nikki. Maybe.”
“Mom, I’m not going to let you get away with pretending to be old. Because you are not old. You are what’s called middle-aged, which is practically the average American age now. Young!”
I’d taken Mom’s hand, which was small-boned, and surprisingly cool. The more I thought about taking Mom on a trip, the more excited I became. After Dad’s death, Clare and I had vague plans to “take Mom somewhere” but these plans had never materialized, for Clare was always busy; and Mom, in her timid/stubborn Kovach/Eaton small-town way, hadn’t encouraged us. But now, the prospect of taking my mother to Paris, Rome, maybe Spain, the two of us traveling together, had seized my imagination; and maybe, just maybe, for of course this was a vital part of my fantasy, Wally Szalla would be traveling with us, too. Wally would certainly be traveling with us. By summer, which was more than five months away, Wally would be divorced. Wally would be “free.” In fact, the trip might be a honeymoon. On “Night Train” Wally would joke about his honeymoon with his mother-in-law. He’d be sweet and charming and funny and bring tears to listeners’ eyes.
Tears flooded my eyes now. Surreptitiously I wiped them with my linen napkin, leaving a mascara smear.
Seeing that Mom was becoming uneasy, Wally shifted the subject to vacations closer to home. Mom told him of our Star Lake cottage in the Adirondacks, where the Eatons had gone for years. How lovely it had been, and how peaceful—“Except when the girls got to be teenagers, and lost interest. They hated to be separated from their friends so it all came to an end.”
“Oh, Mom!” I laughed. “Ancient history.”
“Well, your father and I weren’t about to go alone. And Key West, where we’d been on our honeymoon, this beautiful old ‘historic’ inn called the Windward, we were always planning to go back, but never did. Jon promised for our thirtieth anniversary, but we never quite made it.”
Mom spoke with a wistful smile. How like the elder Eatons: never quite made it.
“Did you enjoy the roast chicken, Gwen?”
“Oh, yes! Thank you, Wally. It was delicious.”
Though she’d managed to eat only about one-third of it. As usual, Mom had ordered the least expensive entree on the menu. I was relieved that she hadn’t launched into her familiar refrain of how overpriced restaurant food was, the Mt. Ephraim Inn especially, when chicken was a Bargain Buy at Pennysaver this week, sixty-nine cents a pound…I was relieved that Mom hadn’t engaged our waitress in conversation, establishing that she and the waitress’s mother had gone to school together, or the waitress’s elderly grandfather was one of Gwen’s swimmers in the Senior Swim Club at the Y…At the end of the meal Gwen glanced around for the waitress, her purse in her lap, wallet in her hand; I knew that she was going to insist upon paying for her “share” of the dinner, but Wally, dear suave Wally, had anticipated all this without my having to tell him.
“Gwen, I’ve already settled the bill. Shall we leave for the concert?”
The look on Mom’s face! So surprised by Wally Szalla’s maneuver, which no Kovach/Eaton from Mt. Ephraim could have imagined, she hadn’t a chance even to protest.
That night, after the Bach concert, after taking Mom home and driving back to Chautauqua Falls, Wally stayed the night with me as he’d been doing lately on weekends. And in the morning, while Wally was shaving, I called Mom trembling with excitement.
“Well! What did you think of him, Mom? Isn’t he nice?”
My voice was lowered, surreptitious. There was a pause before Mom replied.
“Nikki, no. I don’t think that your friend Wally Szalla is ‘nice.’”
Mom spoke so quietly, I almost didn’t hear her. I’d been smiling in expectation of a very different response and now my face froze.
“You—don’t? Oh.”
Mom was saying that Wally Szalla seemed “nice.” Of course. About the “nicest” man she’d ever met, except for Dad.
“But he isn’t, Nikki. Obviously.”
“He isn’t?”
“Nikki, the man is an adulterer. A hypocrite. A manipulator. He has made my lovely sweet daughter into a—an ‘other woman.’ I was awake all last night thinking this, and how wrong it was for you to ask me to meet him, and for me to accept. Oh, I feel just terrible! I couldn’t say one honest word to either of you, I just—‘made conversation.’ I am so ashamed of myself. But, Nikki”—Mom’s voice lifted alarmingly, as if she were about to miss a step on the stairs—“I intend to send you a check made out to that man, to pay for my share of our dinner bill.”
I was so stunned, the receiver slipped from my fingers.
Nikki, your mother is a lovely woman!
Except she seems a bit lonely.
Why don’t we see more of her, Nikki? Take her out again, sometime soon?
I liked her so much, I hope she liked me.
Yet there was the night, months later. Wally said, “Nikki, I need to move back with Isabel for a while, there’s been a crisis,” and I felt a sensation like a knife going in, through my ribs—not a sharp knife but something crude and dull. And I thought Sure. That’s the way this was always going. And I thought Mom knew.
There was more but I’d stopped listening. The word Isabel was repeated in the man’s guilty faltering voice but I wasn’t listening. Hospital, overdose, needed at home and again crisis and when he came to hold me I stood still and stiff and calm in his arms, and I didn’t cry, and I tried not to sound sarcastic when I said, “Why doesn’t this surprise me, Wally?” but I think I did.
Sound sarcastic, I mean.
3.
“Darling Nikki! Climb in.”
He drove me back to Chautauqua Falls. He rescued me from my sister’s house. He would arrange, he said, for someone to pick up my car and drive it back to me in the morning.
When news of Gwen Eaton’s death was first released, Wally had called me immediately to leave a message on my machine—Nikki. I’m here. Let me know when you want me—and I had not responded. All thoughts except of my mother had been pushed out of my mind.
He knew not to talk. He knew to touch, to hold, to hold tight. At the brownstone he knew to half-carry me up the stairs when I stumbled and in my third-floor apartment that was chilly and airless on this mild May day as if its tenant had been absent for months instead of less than a week he knew to lie with me on my bed and hold me in his arms and let me cry. For I was falling, breaking into pieces. I had thought that this grief had happened already and that I had overcome it as I had urged the frightened white dove out of its cage to fly away out of the cemetery for I would be strong from now on as Clare was strong, and after Dad died, as suddenly and unexpectedly as Mom was to die, Mom had been strong, Mom had not been weak and self-pitying. But I was made to realize now that grief would come in waves and there would be wave after wave, there was not a single massive wave to be overcome or even endured, I’d been mistaken for I had had to flee my sister’s house in my weakness, and in my weakness I was pleading, “Don’t leave me again, Wally. I need you so. Don’t go away, Wally, ever again.” And Wally said, “Nikki, I won’t. I won’t leave you, I love you.” In the crook of his arm, against his fleshy rib cage. My face pressed against his chest, feeling the coarse wiry hairs through his shirtfront. The warmth of the man’s body, and the comfort of his body, the strong hard beating heart.
4.
“We’ll work things out, Nikki. This time, I promise.”
“smoky is waiting”
Your mother’s big gray cat is with us, Nikki. Safe and sound. Any time you want to come get him, Smoky is waiting.
Of the many calls on my answering machine this was the most welcome: Smoky is waiting.
The call was from Frannie Haber, a neighbor on Indian Village Road. Frannie and my mother had been friendly for years and w
ere approximately the same age though Frannie had let herself go—“let herself go” was an expression I’d hear repeatedly in my young suburban life, it had connotations of a frazzled female running mad in the street, tearing at hair and clothes and screaming obscenities though in fact it meant nothing nearly so exciting, only just young-but-fattish women, not-so-young-and-fattish women, who took time only to smear lipstick on their mouths, push back their perm-damaged hair and forget it. The Habers’ daughter Ruthie was a classmate of mine and my off-and-on friend since grade school. Half the time Ruthie and I couldn’t stand each other and half the time we were close as sisters. Or almost.
When I spent time at Ruthie’s, she warned me about her mother—“My mom will ask you questions like she’s our age, so chill her out. She’s fun, sure. She can be. But you can’t trust her, that’s what I learned. I bet you can’t trust your mom, either.”
I wanted to say Mind your own mom. Instead I laughed.
“You’d have to be a real dope, Ruthie, to trust anybody with your secrets. Including your so-called girlfriends.”
Now I was thirty-one years old. I hadn’t seen Ruthie in years. I hadn’t seen Frannie Haber in more years. I’d lost my mother. I was desperate to retrieve my mother’s cat. Fumbling the phone, close to breaking down, I called Frannie Haber back and told her I’d be over to pick Smoky up the next evening. Thank God, Frannie had called me and not Clare. I could imagine Clare crying, “Who wants that cat! Take that damned cat back to the shelter!” and slamming the receiver down.