The Love Children (21 page)

Mom and I planned the menu together. We decided to make cassoulet, and we allowed three days to cook it. We ordered a boned loin of pork and leg of lamb, a kielbasa, and a chunk of bacon. We decided to substitute a duck for the goose. We would
serve braised vegetables with it—fennel, turnips, celery root, and carrots. And white potatoes and sweet potatoes. The Lipkins said they would bring a cake, Eve a pie, and Alyssa cheese and crackers and olives for appetizers.

The day before Christmas, while we cooked, Mom had talked about Eve and Alyssa and recovery. I said Alyssa had had a year and still hadn't recovered from losing Tim.

“No,” she agreed. “She probably never will. It takes a lot of willpower to create happiness, and she's a sweet woman but not a strong one.”

That stopped me dead. “What do you mean,
create
it?”

“Well, what do you think, it just happens?”

“Of course. Doesn't it?”

“Does it for you?”

I thought a bit. “It used to. I used to be happy most of the time.”

“And what keeps you from being happy now?”

“The things people do . . .”

“Yes.” She sighed.

We didn't talk for a while after that. The radio was playing a Mahler symphony, which sounded like anything but music for happiness.

“Does this music make you happy?” I asked finally.

“Yes.”

“Why? It's so sad.”

“Yes, it expresses sorrow,” she explained. “Accurately. Profoundly.”

“Hearing sorrow expressed makes you happy!” I cried incredulously.

“Hearing or seeing human emotion expressed is very satisfying to me. Isn't it to you?”

I had to think about that. “I guess so,” I said finally.

“That's why we love art.”

“So art creates happiness?”

“Oh, yes, honey, it does! Don't you feel refreshed after a great concert, a wonderful exhibition? Or even a great meal? Life is terrible. We just have to take that as a given. That there is no reason for unhappiness, no escape from pain, no justification for the ugly things that happen. That's the ground of human sorrow. But it's what you do in the face of that that determines what you are. To make something beautiful of it, that's grand.”

“So how do you create happiness?”

She answered slowly. “I think it lies in the way you approach things. Finding a perspective that makes happiness possible. Lots of people invariably take perspectives that make happiness impossible.”

“I don't understand.”

“We're a family living in a poor country. A member of your family accidentally kills my son. What do I do?”

“Probably send out your brother to kill their son.” I grimaced.

“Yes. Thereby precluding any hope of happiness for either of us, for as long as the vendetta lasts.”

“Yeah . . .”

“But say you send your brother over with some gifts, a heart-felt apology, some money. Say you beg forgiveness. As people did in early societies, for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“Yes. Maybe they'd forgive you.”

“Yes, maybe. At least there's a chance. And even if they couldn't stop holding the accident against you, they might not act against you. This might make harmonious living—and even happiness—possible. Eventually.”

“Yeah. But say people are attacking you and you don't know why.”

“Well, you could stay and keep arguing with them. Or you could leave and find some other people.”

“So what I did . . .”

“Was a choice. You are trying to create happiness in your life.”

“Oh.” I don't know why this made me feel better. It made me sound rational, not like a coward, which was how I felt.

Mom continued. “Say Sandy does something to hurt you.”

“Yeah,” I said tentatively. I didn't like this example.

“Whatever alternative you choose will determine your future relationship. To choose right, you have to know what you want. Do you?”

“Well, I love Sandy . . . I don't want to lose her.”

“Okay, so what are your choices?”

“What are they?”

“You can go off mad and never speak to her again, you can scream at her in rage, you can sulk for a week.”

“But I love Sandy, and I know the only way I'm going to be happy again is if the two of us get along. So instead of getting angry or screaming or sulking, I sit down with her and tell her how she hurt me and ask if she meant to do that.”

“Exactly.”

“And the chances are she didn't mean to hurt me at all, that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and once she clarifies that, we can be friends again.”

Mom smiled at me triumphantly.

“But suppose she did mean to hurt me. Suppose I did something five years ago that she's never forgiven, and she's been waiting all this time to get even. Or suppose something I did reminded her of something in her past, and she identifies me with something awful, and now I'm registered in her mind as something like a wicked stepmother?”

“Well, maybe talking it out can clear it up. Or maybe there's nothing you can do.”

“And?”

“And you're going to be unhappy for a while.”

“So you can't create happiness!”

“You can always try. You can't always succeed.”

“Why don't people always try?”

She shrugged. “Oh, ego. A person might think, She can't do that to me, who does she think she is, I'll show her! They'd let ego get in the way of happiness. Or depression. They might think, Sandy hates me, everybody hates me, I'm just going to go home and stay there and I won't try to be friends with her anymore. Consuming rage can get in the way of friendship . . .”

“Ummm,” I said uncomfortably, thinking that that was exactly how I had been feeling about the people I'd encountered at Andrews. I didn't want to get over it, maybe because I couldn't. When I was enraged with Mom, I wanted to be angry with her, wanted to stay angry. So did that mean I didn't want to be happy?

“All I think about these days,” I said, “is that I don't know how to live to get what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“Maybe that's the problem. I don't know,” I wailed. “I can't figure it out.”

“I can tell you what I want. I want to do good, interesting work and live in surroundings as beautiful as I can make them, and I want to love and be loved.”

“So you throw Philo out?” I exclaimed.

“I didn't throw out love. I love you. I love Eve and Alyssa and Annette and Ted. And I still love Philo. I just don't want to be with him anymore.”

I didn't want to argue with her about that. I mulled things over. “But how can people be happy when things happen to them like what happened to Annette and Ted, having those damaged babies?”

“Everybody suffers damage in life, everybody fucks up in some way, everybody is touched by tragedy.”

“So how can anybody ever be happy?”

“It's a problem,” she admitted.

Thanks a lot.

I decorated the house with holly and pine branches and red berries, hanging them from the mantelpiece and the newel post. I laid an arrangement of them, with candles, in the center of the dining-room table. We got a small tree and Mom and I set it up ourselves.

On Christmas Day, I put some of Mom's records on the stereo: Alfred Deller and a choir singing beautiful carols that were refreshingly unfamiliar and some madrigals by Gesualdo. Everything was lovely. It said what I wanted to say, that we were a happy family; we were together.

The day went well. Lisa was almost grown up, but not so much that she didn't want to have a couple of games of Ping-Pong, and we ran out to the garage in sweaters and turned on the electric heat. Running around playing quickly warmed us up. Lisa was old enough that I didn't feel I had to lose to her anymore, but she won anyway, four to two. We were out there when Sandy and her family arrived. She and Naomi came out to join us and we played doubles for a while.

The guests were drinking wine or scotch or gin when we went back in, and Sandy and I had wine. Eve and Alyssa were there. I was ashamed of myself for thinking of them as ghouls, because Eve was happy and laughing and very smart, like Mom had said she would be. Alyssa was a little sad; she always was. But she was so sweet you just wanted to curl your arms around her. Annette and Ted were full of Vietnam. Mrs. Lipkin was upset about it now too, and even Dr. Lipkin said something about it. Everyone had been outraged by My Lai, and Dr. Lipkin said it wasn't the only massacre, there had been others, for example, at My Khe 4. We discussed what would happen to Calley. Eve said he was just a poor soldier who did what he was told but Dr. Lipkin said that
that was what Eichmann had claimed. I wanted to argue but I was intimidated by Dr. Lipkin.

The cassoulet was wonderful. It had been a good choice. We wanted everyone to feel good, to feel happy, and we wanted food that would contribute to that feeling.

 

The only hard part was Dolores. She arrived late, looking strange. At graduation, she had been blowsy and fat, her breasts limp over a swelling stomach, her eyes teary, her face blotchy. She'd bleached her hair pale blonde and worn a trampish outfit, not the fashion in our crowd. She was much changed now. She had slimmed down and was dressed in a prim, matronly brown suit and brown shoes. Sandy and I had on jeans with sweaters and high boots; our hair was still long and natural. Dolores's hair was short and curled in a wave. She looked like her own mother. Sandy and I grabbed her as soon as she came in, gave her a glass of wine, and took her up to my room, where we could lie around and talk.

“Where have you been!” we exclaimed. “We couldn't find you.”

She was subdued. She didn't look at us. “Yeah, I've been away.”

“Where, Dolores?” I probed. “What was wrong?”

She looked up then. “I was in a hospital.”

Suddenly everything made sense.

“What hospital?” Sandy asked warily.

“St. Katherine's.”

A mental hospital in the suburbs. We looked at her questioningly. She lowered her head, studied her lap.

“I tried to kill my father,” she said. “I stabbed him in the chest with the carving knife. I wounded him; he didn't die. They took me away, put me in the hospital. The state.”

They hadn't charged her with anything. So she must have had
a good reason. We stared at her. Then I went over and embraced her. Of course—she liked to sleep in our gallery when she could. We should have known.

She began to cry, and I did too, and Sandy came and put her arms around both of us and rubbed her cheek against Dolores's.

“But you're out now,” I said finally. “You're free.” It was a question.

“Yes. And back at college. I live in a halfway house. It's part of my sentence. I have to stay there. I was at my parents' house the day you called just by accident. I went there to get the rest of my stuff. I'll never go back there again or see them, either of them, ever again.”

“Both of them?” I asked. “Both of them?”

She exploded. “He fucked me and she was jealous! They fought over me all the time! She'd tell him nasty things about me, she'd nag him to beat me, and sometimes he did but sometimes he'd threaten to beat her, but he was always at me . . . Oh, God! My life wasn't worth living . . .”

“Oh, Dolores!”

I could see her go someplace in her head. She changed her breathing, slowed it down, breathed in deeply, exhaled hard. “It's okay now,” she said. “I live in a group home. The kids there are great. You should hear their stories; I swear they're worse than mine! I love them! I'm starting my life over again. I hope you two will be part of my new life. I mean, you were always good to me. And so was Bishop. How is Bishop?”

We told her about Bishop. We couldn't stop hugging her, but we felt we had to go back downstairs and join the others. By then love for Dolores had lifted my heart.

After dinner, after the dishes were done, people were sitting drinking coffee or brandy or tea, talking in small groups. Sandy, Dolores, and I had dried the dishes and put them away. Now we sat in a corner of the kitchen.

“Do you know what you want in life?” I asked them.

“I do,” Sandy said. “I want to be a doctor; I want to do research and find a cure for cancer. That's what I want most of all. I also want to live with Sarah—together, openly, in our own place. And I know it's ridiculous, but I am determined to live happily ever after.” She laughed. “You know?”

“Yes. Me too,” Dolores said.

“You should be able to have what you want,” I said to Sandy, thinking that her plan sounded eminently realistic. She wasn't asking for too much, I thought.

She shrugged. “I think so too. What about you, Doe?”

“I want to get better and feel good sometimes. Feel good every day even. I want to get educated and help other girls with families like mine. And I will do it!”

I looked at her. She would, I was sure she would.

“How about you, Jess?” Dolores asked.

“I'm not sure. I don't seem to know for sure what I want.”

“Well,” Sandy gave a little laugh, “you for sure want a guy.”

“What do you mean?'

“The right guy. The right man. You're always looking for him.”

“I am?”

“Yes. Don't you know that?”

I gazed at her. “That's what you think of me?”

“Come on, Jess. We all search for love. You just do it . . . well . . . more ardently than most of us. In a more driven way, I guess. More passionate.”