Kinsey and Me (25 page)

a portable life

D
URING THAT LAST
summer I lived alone there with my infant son. I had made a nursery of the narrow
room between my room and Del’s and he slept there, tiny creature with his wobbly infant’s
head and his unfocused eyes. During the previous winter I had redone my room, stripped
off the dark green wallpaper with its pattern of rosebuds, patched the cracks in the
plaster, and taken away the faint glass fixture in the ceiling. For a while the room
remained that way, quite bare, naked of paint and paper. Even the plaster was the
color of cold flesh and the wind rattled at the empty windows. The glass was as chill
and clear as the ice along the sills, and the snow, when it came, made the room glow
with gray light. The few pieces of furniture were draped with sheets, and a narrow
bed was set in the center of the room. The whole of it was as raw and as clean as
a crater, a place bombed-out and abandoned except for me. Everything else in the house
remained the same—the runners of dark blue carpeting in the hall, the tall oval mirror
that stood just outside my bedroom door, my sister’s room across the hall, my mother’s
room to the right, the landing to the stairs, the rooms below, laid out like a vast
museum—all the relics of the life which everyone had left but me. My son was born
in April. My father married again in May and by the time summer came, there were shutters
at my windows, painted chocolate brown, and the walls were the color of mushroom soup
in a can.

The windows were thrown open and the heat poured in, smelling of grass and earth and
occasional summer rains. The record player stood between two windows and I played
Respighi and Aaron Copland. When I listen to those records now I understand what that
music was to me—distant and sweet; in one, the sound of scented waves on a tropical
shore, in the other, the sound of the prairies, something wide and windy, full of
sunshine and bending grasses; unpopulated music where no people walked at all. I lived
in the music and it lived in me and tonight as I listen, I can remember exactly how
it felt to be in that room. I can sense its dimensions, length and breadth, the pale
floors, sanded down to a honeyed hue and varnished to a soft gloss, the new ceiling
fixture like a hanging funnel enameled black so that the light by contrast was hot
and white. The new rug was an oval of black plush, and the room seemed wonderfully
empty, straight and simple, as though a hundred seasons could come and go and never
set a mark upon those walls.

I don’t know how I could have cared so much for a house. When Mildred came, of course,
she had to tear it down. She was Daddy’s new life and nothing could remain of the
old. I understood and it was right, I suppose. For a long time I wouldn’t go back,
wouldn’t look at the land where the house had been, where apartment buildings now
stand. I couldn’t give the sight away, the one in my mind’s eye of that house, hung
in shade where the maples threw pale green shadows on the walk and the weeping willow
in the corner of the lot hid all my childhood games. I couldn’t give away what that
was to me, all the pleasure and pain, the visions and the fantasies; all the doors
we slammed on one another in anger and the sound of piano music in the front hall,
Del and me playing scales. The basement flooded in winter, water creeping up the basement
stairs like a thief; bats came down the chimneys, and the walls in certain sections
of the house were solid brick a foot thick so that the plumbing could never be improved.
There would be occasions when my father would go up with a flashlight into the eaves
of the house and the air up there must have been eighty-five years old. The house
was made up of oddities and improvisations. The laundry chute between the two bathrooms
was boarded up but stale wind still blew from the cabinet below. I would drop things
into that darkness now and then, knowing there could never be a bottom to a pit like
that, though there was, of course. One could run down to the basement and open the
laundry bin to retrieve lost combs and doll shoes, old rags. When I was young, if
I wet my pants I would toss them down that chute thinking that I would never be discovered
in my sins. I hate to think, when the house was torn down, what the workmen uncovered
in a day’s destruction: messages I hid under loosened fireplace tiles in my bedroom
hearth; old dreams boarded up in the walls. God, I’m glad I never saw the house torn
down, rooms exposed when the walls were ripped away. I’ve seen houses like that, opened
up like ripe fruit, and I always think I shouldn’t look, that the rooms are meant
only for the eyes of those who lived there. And what does it all mean, wallpaper and
window shades, bare bulbs hanging down where the fixtures have all been auctioned
off? What does it mean when there’s nothing left but a hole where the basement was
and a winding stairway that rises up out of nowhere and ends abruptly nowhere, too?
And what does it mean to see those disconnected pipes like metal shoots, growing up
out of plaster beds, powdered as fine as snow? I think it means that life is done
and someone should let go. I think it means that no one can hang on to dreams like
that, no matter how precious, no matter how full of pain. I think it means we should
all escape while we can with our suitcases bumping our legs and our airplane tickets
to the West Coast. Out there, they tell me, the houses are made of stucco instead
of frame and the roofs are made out of rock instead of tin. There are no basements
to flood, no icy winters to remind us of the other winters in our lives. And the music,
when it comes again, might sound the same but the prairies are closer to home and
the wide hills and the wind. In the West there is even an ocean like the one Respighi
heard. You have to give the house away to have it, have to give away the trees, sign
away the mortgage on your father who belongs to someone else now, sign away your mother’s
grave. When it’s done and the papers are filed away in your heart, you can make a
new life for yourself, take your infant son and your unborn daughter out of bondage.
And it’s all right, the trade you make, that transaction among trust deeds. You’ll
know that the music you heard in the summer of 1961 was only the song of the next
decade drifting back at you, out of time, and that’s all right, too. When you get
there, when you make it safely, you can look back on the old rooms and you’ll understand
then why they had to go, why they had to be torn down. And you’ll know she never can
destroy the structure in your head, the dream house you’ve resurrected in your mind.
That’s yours and you can furnish it as you like, out of truth, out of memories, out
of recollection and grief. You can make of it a mausoleum too where all your lives
are laid out like the dead. On the West Coast there are graves with no headstones
and the funeral homes look like Howard Johnson restaurants in the East. And for all
you know, you’ll end up there in the pastures of Forest Lawn with no more to commemorate
your life than a statue of Aphrodite in the nude. I think you’d best make your peace
with the past since you’ve come this far. I think you know by now that you won’t go
back again.

the quarrel

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK
at the bedroom door and Kit glanced up from her packing. “Come in,” she said, hesitantly,
and then she went on with what she was doing, folding a sweater, placing it neatly
beside the folded skirt in the half-filled suitcase.

“Kit? Can I come in a minute?” It was her father, standing in the doorway, still in
his robe and slippers.

“Yes, that’s all right, Daddy,” she said.

He was looking uncomfortable, his lean face lined with regret, his mouth creasing
into a smile which hovered, hopefully, looking for one in return.

She smiled for him but not from any joy of her own. She smiled because she recognized
the look on his face. He was being sent like an emissary from an enemy camp; the eternal
diplomat, poor dear.

“Everything all ready to go?” he said.

“Just about. I have a few things more but it’s mostly done.”

He sat down on the twin bed and took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his robe.
“Is there an ashtray in here?” he said, glancing around at the chest of drawers.

Kit took the blue one from the windowsill and handed it to him, watching while he
lit his cigarette and offered one to her. She shook her head slightly.

“I just put one out,” she said.

“Will you sit down and talk a minute?” he asked, and she nodded, knowing exactly what
he would say but unable somehow to refuse him. It would be painful, she knew, because
they would skirt the truth. It would be a conversation like a hundred others she could
remember except that this one would deal with Mildred where the others had dealt with
Vanessa. Vanessa was her first mother, her real mother, and Mildred was her second.
Kit really didn’t want to talk about either of them. In fact, she had assumed when
Vanessa died that all the conversations between fathers and daughters about their
mothers would end. But here was another mother to be discussed, circumstances to be
justified, forgiveness rendered like a judgment in which Kit had already been condemned.

Mildred went to church. Mildred did good works. In the community at large, she was
known for her tireless efforts in behalf of others. This charity did not extend to
Kit or her sister.

Mildred was a partner in her father’s law firm so Kit had known her for years. When
she’d heard the two were getting married, she’d felt happy about it, not realizing
what shrill surprises were waiting for her down the line. Mildred specialized in estate
planning and wills. She told Kit in passing about the bequest of an elderly client
who was leaving twelve thousand dollars for the care of her beloved dog in the event
of her death. Mildred had the dog put down the same week the woman died.

The quarrel the night before had been a bitter one. Mildred was a fighter where Vanessa’s
tyranny had been the silent, sullen type. To Kit, in the moment, thinking back across
all those other moments, it might have been one long quarrel springing out of the
same relentless rage. It might even have been the same mother for all the good it
did her. Mildred had a sharp tongue and an icy accuracy, plunging deep and hard and
sometimes even wildly so that the wounds were all-encompassing and not easily healed.
Without any conscious intent, Kit had begun trying to appease and placate the woman
to no particular effect. Once in a while Kit blew, which she’d done the night before.
And here was her father again, bright and early to patch things up, to smooth over
an unsightly anger, explain away any excess emotion. Blessed are the peacemakers,
she thought, except that she didn’t consider her father blessed at all but damned
because he was willing to pay any price. He was not a meek man but a beaten one. Vanessa,
in twenty-eight years of marriage, had worn him down and now he had married Mildred
and that would finish him off. He was a man strangely satisfied by grief.

“Mildred had to go over to her mother’s this morning. She and Clara have to take turns,
you know. The uh . . . old woman doesn’t know them anymore of course . . . hardly
knows anyone, but the nurses need relief one day a week so Mildred and the other sisters
take turns. She said she was sorry she couldn’t be here to see you off.”

Kit didn’t make much reply to that. Mildred, she knew, must have been delighted to
go sailing off first thing, her martyrdom clearly visible, leaving Kit and her father
to finish up whatever ugly business remained from the night before.

“Mildred really does have a lot on her mind,” he said, and Kit felt a little pinch
of pain. “She works awfully hard,” he went on, “and you know how she is. She has a
quick temper sometimes but she has a heart of gold and she’s really a pretty good
old gal.”

Kit lit a cigarette and emptied her mind. It might have been Vanessa he was talking
about, some stranger, a character in a book. It all seemed the same and what was he
really saying? He was saying, “Kit, dear, do me this one thing . . . let’s overlook
the god-awful thing this woman has done and just be glad anyone would have us at all.”
He was saying, “You and I are the strong ones, Kit, so we’ll have to be the ones who
forgive, let bygones be bygones.” He was saying, “Try, Kit, to get along on just this
fantasy between us, that your mother means well but falters now and then.”

And all the while whatever it was that they were overlooking, Kit and her father together
in these little chats, whatever they were being so courtly about, was in truth some
monstrous violation of the values he had taught her, some disastrous wrong which later,
afterward, he carefully explained away. Sometimes Kit got so caught up in the make-believe
forgiveness she couldn’t remember what it was that did her in, what hellish thing
had taken place the night before. Even now the details of her quarrel with Mildred
were indistinct. Quarrels were like that. Quick and brutal and disconnected so that
later it was nearly impossible to reconstruct the logic of those cruel accusations
and cutting rebuffs. Mildred was an expert at it, of that she was certain, and maybe
that’s all the quarrel had been intended to be: a testing of weapons, of strength,
of skills. Mildred was a paralyzing opponent because she stopped at nothing. Kit had
been utterly vulnerable, caught off guard by some snide remark which then triggered
that violent exchange. Kit had come off poorly and in retrospect could think of a
thousand withering remarks when she had really only burst into tears and run upstairs.
Mildred had cried then too, not to be outdone, and Kit’s father had stayed downstairs
playing diplomat to Mildred’s hysterics so that Mildred had managed to win twice:
once in the real arena and once offstage.

Kit got up and folded a pair of plaid wool slacks and placed them in the suitcase,
listening idly while her father droned on about Mildred’s goodness of heart which
was only occasionally overlaid by venom, spite, and vituperation. Mildred was a big
woman, angry and insecure, an abrasive woman who marched through life hoarding grudges
like bad debts on which she could eventually collect. She was not all that bad, Kit
thought to herself, even while she berated Mildred in her head, but the instinct to
temper her judgment was something her father had taught her and even now she resented
that peacemaker’s tool. Her father amended and qualified and overlooked and understood
and soothed and pacified until reality was not even recognizable. What he did, in
effect, was to take all the blame for whatever went on and then humbly ask someone
to forgive him.

“It was really my fault,” he was saying gruffly. “I should have realized she was tired.
She tried so hard to have everything just right for you. God, she cleaned house for
weeks and cooked. I guess the holidays are pretty darned hard on her too with that
bursitis acting up like it does. It’s a nasty business, bursitis. . . .”

Kit tuned him out again. Medical problems, now what the hell did she care about Mildred’s
medical problems? She knew she was meant to understand from what he said that Mildred
was suffering, staunchly, some terrible ill which was in fact responsible for whatever
cruel things she had said. And Kit would buy it. She knew she would. It was like some
incredible game they had played, these twenty years, being noble and long-suffering
while first Vanessa and then Mildred went at them tooth and claw. What was she supposed
to do with all that pain? What was she meant to do with the anger she felt? Eat it
up, gulp it down? She had done that now for twenty years and she knew that it was
anger that made her stomach cramp, burned the walls of her abdomen like cigarettes
from inside. It was anger that perforated, eventually, and spilled out your guts,
as his had spilled, leaving nothing of all that nobility but a scar a yard wide. It
was anger too that cut away love so that angry people were numb to the core, uncaring
and cut off from tenderness, cut off from tears.

He finished what he was saying and Kit chimed in with the usual clichés and comments,
together manufacturing a plausible excuse for all that was inexcusable in the world.
He patted her hand and kissed her cheek and when he had shuffled out again, she went
right on packing, putting two blouses in with the sweater, her hosiery with the nightgown
and slippers. She noticed she was crying into the suitcase as she worked and it seemed
absurd somehow that whatever true tears she wept for him would only be packed away
with her shoes and carried back with her to California. I could have cried on the
West Coast, she thought. I could have wept without coming three thousand miles for
more. But she couldn’t, she knew, have completed that strange transaction of mercy,
the last bond between them. Father and daughter, heads bent together, acting out rites
that neither of them could identify. If Mildred died, some other lady would come along
to do them in, to cut at them and whip them, giving them grace to forgive again and
peace to indemnify.