My Latest Grievance (4 page)

"But don't you find her shallow?" my mother persisted. "I don't get any sense from her that she cares about what's happening in the wider world. Do you ever discuss politics? Do you know how her family votes?"

"We're teenagers," I said. "Aren't we allowed to be shallow? I'm surrounded by girls"—I gestured to the floors above us—"who spend more time on the phone than on their homework. Do I have to be a little socialist before I'm even old enough to vote?"

"Who called us socialists?" my mother asked sharply.

"No one."

"It's not a dirty word," she said.

"Is it something you heard over at the Woodburys'? Or at the Leonards'?" asked my father.

I said, "Marietta doesn't know what a socialist is."

"I meant her parents."

"Like Dr. Woodbury is going to say, 'Hi, Frederica. How are your parents the commies?'"

My mother turned to my father. "See! These associations are coming from somewhere, because she certainly didn't make those leaps from anything she heard in this house."

"What leaps?" I asked. "And what house? This is barely an apartment."

"The leap," said my father calmly, "from protected union activity to 'commie.'"

I said I was exaggerating, trying to get their goat. Okay? We're even. They called Marietta spoiled and shallow, so I called them Reds.

My mother's expression turned tragic. "But that's our very point: that you would invoke political movements when you need to insult us. It makes me extremely sad."

The colloquialism "lighten up" had not yet entered common usage, but it would have been exactly the right prescription for Aviva G. Hatch, Ph.D. I said, "You're
extremely sad
? Some parents have children who shoplift and flunk every test. I consider myself a pretty satisfactory daughter, and you should, too."

Hugs ensued, as I knew they would. My parents were utterly predictable in all matters emotional. They loved when I lectured them, as long as I sounded psychologically astute and came to a kind conclusion:
Dad, sometimes you agree with Mom just to present a united front, but I don't think your heart's really in it ... Mom, you think you're being cool when you say "Hola!" every time you pass a Hispanic student, but it's really dorky. They're Americans. Just say hi.

I was raising them. The outer Hatches—the professors, union leaders, dorm parents, and non-fashion plates—were famous for their nonconformity and their lefty leadership. Only I knew where the cracks and seams were.

The Woodburys' united front was just as scripted and even more annoying. They were charming in a way I'd been raised to distrust—they called each other "darling" in public—yet I found myself adopting some of the Woodbury manners just the same. My parents pronounced the Woodburys phonies, a word that sprang to their lips easily and often. Mrs. Woodbury's clothes, my mother claimed, broke the rules of antivanity and respect for the poor and underdressed: designer, expensive, seasonally fur-trimmed, rarely repeated. "She must be a very insecure woman if she needs to dress herself up in dollar signs," my mother said regularly.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"You haven't noticed that big rock on her finger. She never takes it off."

I asked, "Is that how you want me to judge people? By their jewelry and clothes? Isn't that a little superficial?"

She said absolutely not. Well, yes, if you belonged to a teenage clique excluding someone who couldn't afford so-called fashion. But did I not see the difference: money slavishly spent on clothes and jewelry and leather accessories when people were going hungry?

"Where?"

"Right here in Boston!"

I asked, "Ma? Do you think people would stop starving if Mrs. Woodbury stopped shopping?"

"In the big picture, globally speaking, yes."

It's not that my mother was stupid. Far from it. I'm sure her IQ was in the genius range, although she would dismiss such categorizing as discriminatory, a scam by the testing establishment. Somewhere along the way, she'd narrowed her sympathies to the ideals I was deeply sick of. She had no compassion for the rich, the well-dressed and well-born, the socially glib and the managerial.

Perhaps I was the true egalitarian, or perhaps I was rebelling. Either way, I sensed early in my life that a tolerance for things grander than myself would come in handy later.

N
OT ENTIRELY UNSELFISHLY
, I proposed that my grandmother visit during my school vacation so that I—an only child with working parents, as I liked to remind them—would have company on my upcoming visits to museums and matinees. "She won't live forever," I said. "I'd really like to dedicate this vacation to her just in case she dies soon." My parents agreed, enfolding me in a group hug as reward for my outreach. Public school vacation didn't overlap with the college's spring break, and they were worried that I would sleep till noon and do nothing constructive. Several months had elapsed since the receipt of the necklace, and, because they were easily distracted by the social sciences and faculty disgruntlements, neither parent suspected that I was playing detective.

My grandmother drove from the Berkshires in what she called "the truck," actually an ancient Hudson Hornet station wagon with bags of potting soil and bone meal in the back. I took her suitcase while she carried a pie plate holding the same apple-cranberry-raisin concoction I'd made the mistake of complimenting too effusively on my last visit.

"Where are your parents?" she asked as soon as she crossed the threshold.

"At school. We're going to meet them over at Curran for lunch."

"I've always meant to sit in on one of David's classes," she said.

"His classes are Tuesday and Thursday. Mom teaches today, though."

She hesitated. "Would I enjoy one of hers?"

"Mom would say
absolutely.
"

She raised her eyebrows, which I took as an excellent sign that we'd soon be discussing the relative merits of my father's wives. I crossed the kitchen to the bulletin board, where each parent's schedule was thumbtacked. "Monday is Social Stratification. Ninety minutes. Starts at one
P.M
."

She joined me at the bulletin board. "I might just have lunch over at the faculty dining room today and go to one of David's classes tomorrow. Methods of Testing and Assessment sounds interesting."

"
He
thinks so," I said.

"I wouldn't want to breeze into your mother's seminar unannounced."

I said I understood completely. Alternately, we could go to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner, the Museum of Science, the glass flowers at Harvard, or the Freedom Trail. But first to settle the all-important question of where she'd sleep.

"Not the guest suite?" she asked, referring to a bed and bath down the hall occasionally used to house a visiting dignitary or generous alumna.

I explained that my room had two brand-new mattresses, whereas the small, north-facing guest room had a mattress that sagged in the middle. How did she feel about that?

"I'm told I snore."

I said, "I'm told I sleep like the dead."

My room was immaculate. I had turned down the corners of each quilt in what I hoped was an inviting and professional-chambermaid fashion. The stuffed animals of my youth had been banished to my closet, except for the pair that had been gifts from her. The centerpiece, though, was my dresser. On its waist-high surface was an artistic arrangement of my colognes, my two lipsticks, my hairbrush and comb, my leatherette manicure set, and—as if that's where one kept one's precious jewels—my pearls, coiled concentrically, their clasp and its sapphire ready for inspection.

"How pretty," she said, looking everywhere but the bureau. "Is this yellow a new paint job?"

"Relatively new."

"What was here before?"

"Beige." My gaze wandered, helpfully, meaningfully, to the bureau and my precise arrangement of pearls.

"What are you looking at?" my grandmother asked.

She wasn't focusing, which meant I had to abandon subtlety. "This necklace? Does it look familiar?" I asked.

She finally put her suitcase down and came closer. Before she could answer, I confided, "Daddy's first wife sent them to me as a birthday present, completely out of the blue."

She answered rather casually, "Did she say why?"

I explained that I was the daughter that Laura Lee never had due to the untimely divorce, which apparently was not her idea. "But you know a lot more about her than I do," I prompted.

My grandmother picked up the necklace and did what seemed an astonishing thing to me—she put her mouth around a pearl and nibbled it.

"Hey!"

"They're real," she said. "I was wondering if she sent you a knock-off."

"You know they're real from biting into one?"

"Here," she said. "Real pearls have a gritty quality. Try it. Picture the grain of sand that started it all."

"No, thanks," I said. "Besides, even if they were a fake, it would have been incredibly nice of her to go to the trouble to make a copy, don't you think?"

"It's got me worried," said my grandmother. "I don't think she'd give them away to the daughter of ... let's just say 'her successor.'"

"The other woman," I added.

"How much have they told you?"

I said I knew the big picture but not the small.

My grandmother said, "I hope you don't keep your valuables lying on the bureau collecting dust."

I said no, absolutely not.

"And never wear perfume with pearls. The alcohol isn't good for them."

I swore that I would never wear perfume with pearls. What about toilet water? What about hairspray?

"You're too young for hairspray," she said.

I needed to steer the conversation away from the care and storage of my necklace to its former owner and to my mother the homewrecker. "Mom made me mail it back, but then Laura Lee sent it all over again. She wouldn't take no for an answer."

"It's odd," said my grandmother. "But then again, Laura Lee was always something of a free spirit. I'm just a little worried that something's wrong and she's bequeathing these to you."

"Dad was worried, too..." I stopped there, sparing her the theory that Patsy Leonard and I had embraced—that Laura Lee was forever young and immortal in her ex-husband's wistful heart.

"They were my mother's," she said. "Your great-grandmother Paulette's. I gave them to David to give to Laura Lee as a wedding present. She must have passed them on to you because she felt they should stay within our family. I find that very honorable. Some people might have sold them under the same circumstances."

I asked if she and Laura Lee had been in touch lately.

"Christmas cards," said my grandmother. "And birthday cards, one-sided, from her to me. She's surprisingly good at remembering dates."

"But you don't send her a birthday card back?"

My grandmother pursed, then unpursed, her lips. "Your father asked me not to."

"Even though she's your relative?"

"It has to do with everyone getting along," she said. "Unfortunately, when divorces happen, a mother's loyalty has to remain with her own child. Or at least she should keep up the appearance of loyalty." She looked toward the door, assessing our privacy. "Laura Lee was a dear child, very sweet. Something of a naïf, if you know what that means."

I said I did, of course.

"Someone who doesn't find her way easily through the world. Unworldly. Childlike," she explained.

"Naïf," I repeated.

My grandmother said softly, "I was very fond of her."

I said, "I know. Or you wouldn't have kept her picture all these years."

My grandmother said, "Maybe I
will
sleep in here. Which bed is yours?"

I thought it was obvious—Raggedy Ann on mine versus Raggedy Andy on the unused twin. "This one," I said.

"I get up several times during the night," she said. "It might be better if I sleep next to the door." She turned back toward the bed and her overnight bag.

I said, "I'm putting the pearls away. I never leave them out for the dust
or
the kleptomaniacs."

"I assume you're joking," said my grandmother. "And while we're on the subject, I wouldn't wear them to school, where all your friends could see them and later ask to borrow them."

"I wouldn't wear them now, except for a really special occasion. Like a prom. If someone invited me."

"Or your wedding," she said. "Something old and something blue, if you're familiar with that aphorism."

"Mom might find that a little creepy," I said.

"You won't be getting married anytime soon. Maybe your mother will get used to them by then."

I was about to retire the pearls to their hiding place, but I put them around my neck instead. I thought my grandmother would scold me, misunderstanding the gesture—you're
not
wearing those to the faculty dining room, are you?—but she stared without expressing reservations.

"You're quite taken with the whole idea, aren't you?" she asked.

"They're beautiful," I said.

"I meant Laura Lee. And your father's other life."

I sat down on the bed and fiddled with Raggedy Ann's yarny hair. After a long pause I asked, "How could they not tell me he was married before?"

"I'm sure they had very good, very sound reasons."

I asked if she'd hung on to their wedding photo all these years, so I'd find it someday.

"Not consciously."

I posed the daring question I'd been saving up: "Did you and Laura Lee talk on the phone and decide I was an adult, and that it was high time I knew about my father's secret past?"

"Nonsense," said my grandmother.

***

When she didn't bring up Laura Lee or the pearls at lunch, I knew she and I were formally in cahoots. As ever, my parents were distracted by a union problem, which they promised to forget about for at least the next hour.

My grandmother chewed a bite neatly from her egg salad sandwich before asking, "What are you two protesting these days?"

"Not protesting," my father said. "Aviva is our grievance chairperson. We're discussing a complaint that was filed this morning."