A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity (22 page)

Steve brought out a tray of after-dinner drinks. Jamie and I both refused more alcohol. Steve poured himself some cognac, then started talking about the case. Silver-haired and red-faced, he was inching toward dangerous territory, wanting to talk about the other defendants and their lawyers.

There had already been some analysis in the media about the growing division among the defendants, and so far Steve wasn’t saying anything interesting or new, but Jamie was growing wary. His answers were getting shorter and shorter, and I was reminded of the way Mary Paige Caudwell had, at Blair’s party, kept moving closer and closer to Chris Goddard while Chris kept moving back.

I decided to help out. Three days ago one defendant and his lawyers had started to wear Bengal-striped ties. On such ties a dark stripe alternates with a light stripe of the same width. Although conservative, such ties make a strong statement, and the supposition was that this defendant and his lawyers were trying to separate themselves from the others. I had read about this in the newspaper and heard about it on TV. I figured that it was something safe to mention, and then I could redirect the conversation. I would ask Steve if many men in Houston wore college ties or ties from their clubs. And were the connections implied by those ties more or less important in Houston than in the rest of the state?

“It is interesting—” I said, and just as Steve was turning to look at me, I felt a sharp blow on my shin.

Jamie had kicked me. Jamie was telling me to shut up.

I looked at him, startled, disbelieving. Didn’t he trust me? Didn’t he know that I wasn’t going to run my mouth off about the case?

He looked back at me, his eyes hard, his lips tight. He was ordering me to keep quiet.

I was furious. How dare he not trust me? How
dare
he? I was not a clueless, brainless child bride. And when it came to the little dance that was going on at this table right now, I was better at it than he was.

Part of me wanted to barrel ahead with my tie conversation just to show Jamie that I did know what I was doing. I felt like a defiant child. All I wanted to do was show him that I had been right and he had been wrong.

The trouble was that I was now too angry to listen to myself carefully. Jamie’s silent accusation made it likely that I would say something inappropriate. So I had to remain silent.

As soon as we got in the car, I turned to him, determined to defend myself.

“Don’t start,” he snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Jamie, I do not take orders from you.”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it. Lydia, please, don’t make me fight with you, too.”

So I turned away from him and stared out the window. I remained silent for most of the drive home. Then he asked me what time tomorrow my flight was.

If that was an apology, he was going to have to do a lot better.

Sunday morning he walked me
through the lobby, and we said good-bye in front of my rented car. There was no point in him coming to the airport with me since I had to return the car.

“I’ll try to get home next weekend,” he said.

Don’t,
I wanted to scream.
Don’t. Just stay here until this trial is over. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Stay here.

“That would be great,” I said.

“I may not be able to get away.”

“I understand.”

“This week’s been okay for you, hasn’t it?” he asked, his voice edged with concern. “A nice break from your routine?”

I like my routine. I like coming down the back stairs every morning to make coffee in my charcoal and yellow kitchen. I love sitting at the kitchen table hearing the sounds of Erin getting herself up and then the fifteen minutes later tiptoeing into Thomas’s dark room and scooping my arms around his little blanketed body to wake him up. I love opening my car door and chatting with the neighbors if they are on their front porch. I love going into the kids’ school, knowing that I always see someone I know.

I didn’t need a break from my routine, but he wanted me to lie. So I did. “Oh, I’ve been fine.”

I caught an earlier flight
than I had planned, and I made a close connection in Charlotte so the cab dropped me off at the house hours before I was expected. I came in through the front door and saw that some of the boxes from my shopping expeditions had already arrived. I heard noise in the kitchen and eagerly went through the house to find the kids, but only Bubbe was there.

She apologized immediately. “Erin’s at the movies with the girls, and Thomas is at”—she glanced at a Post-it note by the phone—“Zak Hoffman’s. Mimi said that he was allowed to go there.”

Zak was one of the Sidwell kids on Thomas’s soccer team. Thomas was certainly allowed to go to Zak’s house. I just wished that he were here.

I launched into a repetition of my profuse thanks.

“Stop it,” Bubbe ordered. “I know you’re grateful, and you know I had a good time. So let’s not be boring about it.”

I smiled. “I did bring you a scarf. It may be in one of those boxes by the front door.”

“You did do a lot of shopping.”

“Yup.”

Bubbe looked at me. “Is that good or bad?”

I sat down at the table. Why wasn’t she my mother? Why hadn’t I deserved a mother like this? “Bubbe, I had no idea why I was there. I don’t know that I did my husband any good.”

“Did he do
you
any good?”

“No.” I was puzzled by her question. “I didn’t expect him to. I would have felt good if I had been able to help him, but except for the first night, I didn’t make much of a difference. So I’m just mad at him.”

“Does he know that?”

“No. I wasn’t going to pitch a major prima-donna fit because I had to eat breakfast alone.”

“That must have taken a lot of self-control.”

I looked at Bubbe curiously. My mother prides herself on speaking her mind, but as my sister-in-law points out, Mother only speaks her mind when she has something negative to say. If she has something complimentary or positive, she manages to repress herself beautifully.

Bubbe probably holds her tongue a fair amount, but when she does speak, she does tell you what she is thinking, both good and ill.

“Bubbe, where are you going with this?”

My mother would have instantly denied meaning anything at all. That was another one of her specialities, making it clear that she disapproved of something without specifying what it was. You ended up designing your own multiple-choice question with all of the answers being something you were doing wrong.

Whereas Bubbe paused for a moment as if to be sure that I really wanted to hear what she had to say. “Sometimes I don’t think you girls give your husbands much of a chance.”

“A chance to do what?”

“To be your friend. I know things were different for me. I was working in the days when no one else was, so I didn’t have the kind of girlfriends that Mimi has.”

“But you didn’t need friends the way we do,” I argued. “Your mother was living in your building, and your mother-in-law was nearby, too. You didn’t need to rely on friends to watch the kids while you went to the dentist. You had family. We don’t.”

“My mother and mother-in-law were a lot of help,” she admitted, “but they weren’t my girlfriends.”

“Who did you tell your troubles to?”

“My husband.”

“What about when the troubles were about him, who did you talk to then?”

“Him.”

Oh. “But, Bubbe, it wouldn’t have been fair this week when Jamie was so tired and miserable. And not only unfair, but also pointless. He’s so drained right now that he doesn’t have anything to give back.”

“I’m sure you’re right about this particular week. But what about the rest of the time? Is he your friend the rest of the time?”

Is Jamie my friend? “I don’t think he would know how.”

“That’s no surprise. Men don’t know how to be friends with their wives; you’ve got to teach them. I had to take my Samuel by his ears and tell him that he just needed to listen to me. Otherwise every time I would complain about the people I worked with, he would tell me to find a new job. I didn’t want a new job; I just wanted to fuss. So he learned. Sometimes I think it is too easy when you’ve got a lot of girlfriends. Then you talk to them and you don’t have to train your husband to listen to you.”

Wasn’t Bubbe’s advice dated, good only if you hadn’t left your hometown? Certainly the messages we were getting from popular culture argued the opposite. Whether you wanted bar pals or quilting buddies, a woman was supposed to have lots of female friends. If a woman had friends, it proved that she wasn’t a competitive bitch; it proved that she was not dependent on men for approval.

But did having women friends keep you from having to show your husband what you needed from a friend?

Unlike every housekeeper, nanny, or
cleaning lady we had ever had, Bubbe knew how to sort mail. There was a pile of first-class letters and bills and a pile of larger first-class envelopes. The magazines were stacked neatly by the reading chair, and everything else was in a bag next to the recycling bin for me to check if I wanted.

In the pile of big official-looking envelopes were two from the Sidwell Friends School addressed to the kids. The size of the envelopes said everything. A small envelope meant you were rejected or on the wait list. My kids had gotten big envelopes. They had been admitted: Thomas to the third grade, Erin to the seventh.

I thought of how many families all over the D.C. area had been aching to get those big envelopes from Sidwell, how these acceptances would have made them ecstatic. I didn’t bother to open the envelopes. The kids weren’t changing schools, and Jamie had no right to insist that they should, not when he was never home.

When I went up to say good night to Erin, I sat down on her bed. “You know you got into Sidwell?”

“I figured that. Bubbe said we could open them, but a big envelope did mean that you were in.”

I nodded.

“You aren’t going to make me go, are you?”

“No, honey. We’ll sit down and talk about it as a family. As I said before, even though the decision is ultimately mine and Dad’s”—or just mine—“you will have a say. We will listen to you.”

“Then I think I don’t want to go.”

I was a little surprised that she only
thought
that she didn’t want to go. I would have expected her to be more emphatic.

I patted her quilt-covered leg. “You guys were really good sports about staying with Bubbe. Dad and I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

She wasn’t looking at me. Something was on her mind. I wondered if it was Sidwell or something else. Or maybe she was just tired. I decided to wait until tomorrow to badger her.

Which for once in my life actually paid off.

I was still awake at ten-thirty. I was in bed, happily reading
Threads,
a sewing magazine that was always full of extremely elaborate instructions about things such as using a partial stay when installing a quarter-round godet. My door was partially ajar, and I heard Erin’s footsteps in the hall. I looked up as she came into my room.

“Mom?”

I moved over, hoping that she would sit down on the bed.

She did. “Is your hair different?”

“Yes.” I didn’t suppose that this was why she had come in. “I had it cut, and the color’s warmer.”

“I thought you had changed it.”

We sat silently for a moment.

“And that’s a new nightgown.”

“Yes.”

We were silent again.

“Mom?”

“Yes, Erin?”

“You know what Dad is always saying about following your Inner Light and about the primacy of the individual conscience?”

I nodded. The “primacy of the individual conscience” was probably a Reform Judaism thing that she had picked up from Elise or Rachel, but it was close enough to our family’s values that I didn’t think that we needed to have a theological discussion.

“Yes.”

“And that sometimes people tell you to do something and even make you promise, but if you know that it is wrong, maybe you shouldn’t do it?”

The lawyer, the mother, in me could think of tons of exceptions to that, especially if I were the “people” telling her to do something, but I didn’t want to get us going down the bunny trail. “Yes.”

“I heard something.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, Mom.”

“Of course not.”

“And you have to promise me that you won’t get all crazy.”

“Erin, what is it?”

“It’s Faith and Mr. Goddard.”

“Faith and Chris Goddard? What about them?”

“He’s fallen in love with her.”

What? I struggled with the covers, but Erin was sitting on them, trapping me. Chris and Faith? Faith was a child. I forced myself to sound calm. “Do you believe that?”

“No, not that he loves her, but he does call her into his office and kiss her.”

I did not believe that for one second. Not Chris. His face flashed before me—his neat features, his close-cropped hair, his perfectly chosen wire-rimmed glasses, and his quick sly smile. No, not Chris. “How did you hear this?”

“Elise told me. Faith made the three of them promise not to tell, but Elise told me last night. She said that they were starting to think that they should ask someone what to do.”

“They were right. Erin, sweetheart, this has to be looked into. She is accusing him of sexual abuse—”

“Oh, Mom, it’s not
that.
” She still had a young girl’s horror at the notion that people actually had sex.

“Any kind of contact like that between an adult and a minor is very problematic. Her accusations could ruin his career.”

It turned out that none of the other girls had said anything to their mothers, which sort of surprised me. I wouldn’t have thought that Erin and I had a better relationship than did the others, but, of course, Faith didn’t exert as much influence over Erin.

Or maybe Erin and I did have a better relationship. I should give myself some credit.

She and I talked a little bit, and she finally agreed that I could say something to Chris. “Since if it is not true, he might want to know that she is saying it.”