American Wife (25 page)

AROUND THREE IN
the morning, I awoke to find my hand at Charlie’s groin. We both were naked beneath the sheet, which he had persuaded me we ought to be on our inaugural night together. He was on his back, and I was on my side next to him, my head on the same pillow, my palm on his upper thigh. I was mortified. But if I moved my hand, would that alert him to the fact that it had been there in the first place? As slowly as I could, I slid my fingers a few inches away, and he stirred, as I’d feared he would. He had one arm set around my back, and without opening his eyes, he turned his head, kissed the part in my hair, and immediately seemed to fall back to sleep.

I lay in the dark with my eyes open. Had I not, in fact, been attempting something? Wondering, if only subconsciously, what I could get away with, what would be indecorous, how much we could casually encroach upon each other? And he either hadn’t noticed or had been unfazed. I moved my hand back to where it had been, and I, too, fell asleep again.

WHEN WE ARRIVED
at the house in Riley the next day, I knocked on the door, and my grandmother answered wearing an orange sleeveless acrylic dress, sheer panty hose, and orange heels. A skinny white leather belt was cinched around her tiny waist, and her bare arms were painfully scrawny. She looked back and forth between Charlie and me several times—she had to crane her neck—and then she clapped her hands together once and said, “Oh, this’ll be
good
!” She held out her cheek for me to kiss.

“This is Charlie,” I said. “Charlie, this is my grandmother Emilie Lindgren. Granny, I thought of calling, but we were in the area, and I—”

“My dear, I love surprises.” Her voice contained a note of mischief as she added, “I hope you do, too.”

The reality was that I had purposely not called ahead, not only because I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that Charlie and I had spent the previous night together in Houghton, but also because I didn’t want my mother to feel as if she had to prepare an elaborate meal on short notice. They ate lunch every day at twelve-thirty, and it was a quarter to two as we entered the house.

“Mrs. Lindgren, I’ve promised your granddaughter I’ll be on my best behavior,” Charlie said, but before my grandmother could respond, my mother called, “Who is it, Emilie?”

Then my mother walked into the living room, and her eyes widened. “Alice, how lovely, but I wasn’t expecting you until next weekend.”

“We’re just stopping by,” I said. “I wanted to introduce you to—This is Charlie. Charlie, my mother.”

“Dorothy Lindgren,” my mother said, and she and Charlie shook hands. There was an extended silence, and then my mother said, with less enthusiasm than I might have anticipated, “Why don’t you two come sit in the other room?”

Had this been a bad idea? It wasn’t until we’d entered the dining room, where they didn’t usually linger this long after lunch, that I understood: There, sitting at the table, wearing a plaid short-sleeved shirt, sipping from a coffee cup that seemed especially dainty in the grip of such a heavyset man, was Lars Enderstraisse. Without looking at her, I immediately sensed my grandmother gloating; I also sensed my mother’s twittery discomfort. “Honey, you know Mr. Enderstraisse,” she said. “Lars, you remember my daughter, Alice, and this is her friend—What’s your last name, Charlie?”

“Blackwell,” I said quickly.

“By all means, call me Lars,” Mr. Enderstraisse said.

Charlie and I sat at the chairs without place mats or plates in front of them. “Can I get you two some ham?” my mother said, and I replied, “We already ate. I’m sorry for not calling ahead, but we just were in Houghton.” By this point, I very much regretted our decision to arrive unannounced. Another silence descended, and my mother said, “Let me at least get you something to drink.”

At the same time, I said, “Oh, we’re fine,” and Charlie said, “I’ll take a beer if you have one.”

“I’ll help.” I stood. “Anyone else?”

“Beer does a real number on Lars’s stomach,” my grandmother announced authoritatively. Although I may have been the only one to notice, my grandmother was emanating supreme self-satisfaction.

“Bloating, gas, and the like,” Mr. Enderstraisse—Lars—affirmed. He spoke genially, and I wondered, was he really dating my mother? I had never seen him not wearing a postal uniform.

“Alice, sit,” my mother said, and uncertainly, I complied.

“Alice, I’ll bet you haven’t heard about the breakin at the Schlingheydes’.” My grandmother had turned to Charlie and me. “It’s the talk of the neighborhood. Don and Shirley slept through the whole thing, but in the morning, they saw that a kitchen window had been shattered and the television set was gone, along with Shirley’s silver. Now, the bizarre bit is that they found half a turkey sandwich left out on the drain board, with just a few bites taken from it and the other half gone. Can you imagine having the presence of mind to fix a snack at the same time you’re robbing a house? He’d even spread mayonnaise on the bread.”

“When was this?” I asked.

Over her shoulder, my grandmother called into the kitchen, “Dorothy, was it Sunday night?”

“Monday,” my mother said as she appeared in the doorway carrying Charlie’s beer. “It sounds to me like a very disturbed person.”

She passed the beer to Charlie, who said good-naturedly, “Some friends of my folks got robbed one time in the sixties, and the thief left behind a shoe.” Charlie had, of course, no idea how irregular Lars Enderstraisse’s presence was.

“I hope you’ve been keeping the doors locked,” I said.

“Oh, the Riley PD will catch the fellow in no time.” My grandmother’s tone was festive. “If Sheriff Culver manages to tear himself away from Grady’s Tavern for more than an hour, that burglar won’t stand a chance.” Without warning, my grandmother said to Charlie, “Now, what is it you’ve done to earn a visit to Alice’s ancestral home?”

“I’ve won her heart.” Charlie grinned, and I felt a nervous curiosity about whether he and my grandmother would like each other. While they shared a certain high-spiritedness, I was not certain it was of the same variety, and sometimes different varieties of a similar tendency were worse than total dissimilarity. Under the table, Charlie took my hand.

“Charlie, are you also a teacher?” my mother asked.

“No, ma’am, I’m in the beef industry.” When Charlie squeezed my hand, I wondered if he could tell I was tense. “I divide my time between Houghton, Madison, and Milwaukee.”

Did Charlie assume that I’d previously told them who his family was? Given that I hadn’t, perhaps I ought to now, when my indirection was on the cusp of turning into an outright lie.

My grandmother lit a cigarette she’d extracted from a pack beside her plate. “You must be paying a pretty penny at the gas pump.”

“Charlie, I heard Alice say your surname is Blackwell,” Lars Enderstraisse said. “I don’t imagine you’re a relation to Blackwell sausage or the former governor.”

“I should hope not,” my grandmother said cheerfully. “What a chokehold that man had on this state!”

In a loud voice, as if I could retroactively cover up her remark, I said, “Harold Blackwell is Charlie’s father.”

There was a silence, and Charlie was the one who broke it. He said, “Nothing like politics to inspire passionate disagreement, is there?” He smiled—a feeble smile, but he was trying.

“
Your
father is Harold Blackwell?” A confused expression had contorted my mother’s features.

“And Charlie’s running for Congress next year,” I said. “But it’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone.” I glanced over to see if he was irritated, and he appeared to be less than thrilled, though it was hard to say whether this was because of my grandmother’s comment or my own lack of discretion. But wasn’t it better to get all of it over with at once? Or would this visit be the abrupt death knell of our relationship, the revelation of how little, against the backdrop of my upbringing, we actually had in common?

“Running for Congress—goodness gracious!” my mother said, and I was reminded of my ignorance of her political leanings. “What an exciting time for you.”

“I won’t announce my candidacy until January,” Charlie said. “Frankly, I’ll have a tough road ahead of me with an incumbent like Alvin Wincek. But I can honestly say it would be a privilege to serve the people of Wisconsin’s Sixth District.”

Please don’t use your speech voice,
I thought. I couldn’t even look at my grandmother.

“You’re a Republican like your father?” she said, and when I did dare to glance at her, I saw that she was staring unabashedly at Charlie.

“Indeed I am,” he said, and his voice contained a jovial defensiveness
.

“In a progressive town like Madison, I’d think that would put you out of step with your peers,” my grandmother said.

“Appearances can be deceiving.” Charlie’s tone was still perfectly civil. “The students holding their protests are loud and strident, but the backbone of Madison is hardworking middle-class families.”

Both of you, stop it,
I wanted to cry out.

“A Republican I really admire is Gerald Ford,” my mother said. “What a difficult situation to enter into, and his poor wife, struggling like that with her health.”

“Jerry is a loyal foot soldier,” Charlie said. “He’s a man who knows his strengths and limitations.”

There was a pause as we all tried to determine which direction the conversation would go. Charlie seized the reins. “This is a lovely home, Mrs. Lindgren,” he said and it was clear that the Mrs. Lindgren he was addressing was not my grandmother but my mother. “How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, mercy, it’s been—help me, Emilie—we came here right before Alice was born, so I suppose thirty-one years. Now, Charlie, you must have met Alice’s dear friend Dena. Mack and Lillian, Dena’s parents, are just across the street, and they moved in not but six months after we did.”

“I have met Dena,” Charlie said warmly. “She’s the life of the party.”

“Oh, she’s a pistol. Lillian tells me business is booming at her store.”

“How’s her sister?” I asked.

“I think she’s doing better now.” My mother smiled. “Charlie, did Alice tell you her father managed Riley’s branch of Wisconsin State Bank and Trust?”

Charlie smiled too, but blankly.

“They also have branches in Madison,” I said. “There’s one at West Washington off the square.”

“They’re the best bank in the region.” My mother nodded fervently. “Are you sure I can’t get either of you something to eat? Alice, I made apple kuchen again last night, and you were exactly right about adding sour cream to the dough.”

“That I can vouch for,” Lars said. “I must say that if I’d known when I woke up this morning I’d end up sitting across from the son of the governor of Wisconsin, I’d have brought along my camera. Everyone at the post office will be tickled pink when I tell them on Monday.” Directing his comment at Charlie, he added, “That’s where I work, at the one down on Commerce.”

I willed myself not to be embarrassed or to give in to adolescent shallowness.

“You’d be surprised that even in a town like Riley, people send their mail to the most unusual of places,” Lars was saying. “The other day a gentleman shipped a package all the way to Brussels, Belgium.”

“Where Audrey Hepburn was born,” my grandmother said.

There was a lull, and Charlie, who appeared neither troubled by nor interested in Lars’s employment, said, “Mrs. Lindgren, have I missed my chance at the apple kuchen?”

“Not at all.” My mother sprang from her seat. “Alice?”

“None for me, but let me help you,” I said.

In the kitchen, a foil-covered pan sat on a burner, and my mother turned on the oven and stuck the pan inside.

“Charlie can eat it cold, Mom.”

“But it’s so much better warmed up. I just wish we had a little vanilla ice cream left—you don’t think I ought to run down to Bierman’s?”

“You definitely shouldn’t.”

“I had no idea he was the son of Harold Blackwell,” she said, and then, after a beat, “I know Lars’s presence must be quite a surprise. I was in buying stamps one day, and we got to talking—he’s a very kind man, Alice.”

“No, he seems like it. I’m sorry I didn’t call to say we were coming.”

“No one will ever replace your father for me.” There was a fierceness in her expression, as if she expected that I would not believe her.

“Mom, I think it’s fine. It’s good for you to, you know, socialize. You two should come to Madison for dinner, either with Granny, or just you and Lars if you want to come when Granny’s in Chicago.”

My mother appeared confused. “Did Granny tell you she’s going to Chicago?”

“Isn’t her visit to Dr. Wycomb in the next week or two?”

My mother shook her head. “Granny hasn’t visited Gladys Wycomb in years.”

I was startled. “Does she not have the energy anymore?”

“Well, she’s eighty-two,” my mother said. “She’s so sharp that it’s easy to forget.” My mother had picked up her egg timer, and I watched her set it for seven minutes. As she did, she said, “I’ve been meaning to say, Alice, thank you for selling the brooch. I know we probably didn’t get as much as it was worth, but every little bit helps.”

WE DID NOT
stay long; I think all of us, with the exception of my grandmother, had found the encounter draining. My mother insisted on sending Charlie home with the portion of kuchen he didn’t eat, and the five of us stood in the living room exchanging goodbyes. “I can see why Alice speaks so fondly of where she comes from,” Charlie said to my mother, and his voice was loud and confident but also distant—it was the way I’d later see him speak to constituents. When my grandmother shook his hand, she said, “I never voted for your father, but I always admired your mother’s sense of style. There’s a picture I once saw of her in a stunning fox cape.”

Charlie was not smiling as he said, “I’ll tell her you said so.”

In the car, I directed him out of town, and after we reached the highway, neither of us spoke for nearly ten minutes. “I’m sorry if that was awkward,” I finally said. “You were a good sport.”

He said nothing.