The Good Life (10 page)

“How do we get up there?” asked Ann.

“You climb up the side and say ‘Excuse me’ a lot.”

“Thank you,” said Eileen, smiling at Joanne. “You’ve been very helpful.”

Ann and Eileen slowly made their way through standing, sitting, and shifting bodies juggling backpacks, babies, purses, popcorn, newspapers, needlepoint, cell phones, and crosswords. Halfway up, they found an unoccupied section of bench and plopped down. Eileen was out of breath. “My goodness,” she said. “The last time I climbed bleachers,
you
were in high school. Remember? The stadium at the back of the school had bleachers that went almost to heaven.”

“Of course I remember,” said Ann, pulling her left arm from her jacket sleeve.

“People still talk about the 4-H fair the summer you graduated. It was spectacular. Do you remember the size of the Grundys’ cows?”

“That was a long time ago,” said Ann, checking her cell phone messages to see if Mike had called.

“Look!” said Eileen, pointing at the gym floor. “There’s Lauren.”

Just then, Lauren, on the sidelines and scanning the crowd, spotted her grandmother. Eileen stood and waved, and Lauren waved back. Seconds later, she bounded onto the court, taking the place of a teammate in the back row. Ann pocketed her phone and turned her attention to her daughter. She watched her return a hard serve by bumping the ball to the front row. One of her teammates tapped it over the net to win the point. Lauren was shorter than many of her teammates, but this didn’t appear to be a disadvantage. Lauren next received the ball in the front row and sent it straight up into the air for her teammate to slam onto the opposing court. She appeared calm and confident, Ann noticed. Her next four shots were dead-on, perfect.

At the end of the first game, which Lauren’s team won 15–9, Ann looked around the gym. She saw several people she knew, including her son. He was leaning against the entranceway, unwilling, Ann guessed, to pay the $2 student fee to get in. Two boys were with him; they were all talking. Meeting his eyes for a second, Ann raised her hand in a half-wave that Nate didn’t acknowledge. Didn’t he see her? Ann returned her attention to the court just as Lauren, who was standing in the front row, jumped and sent a ball screaming to the far end of the opposing team’s court. Lauren’s teammate gave her a double high five.

After the match, Ann and Eileen waited outside the gym in the hallway, even more crowded and aromatic than before the game. Ann stood with her back up against the wall, trying to avoid contact with teenage sweat, dirt, and cigarette breath. As soon as Lauren emerged from the locker room, Ann ushered them quickly outside. Just beyond the doors, Eileen stopped Lauren and hugged her. “You are a fantastic volleyball player,” she said. “I’m so proud of you. What an exciting game!”

Lauren beamed. “Thanks, Gran. And thanks for coming. What did you think, Mom?” Ann’s heartbeat echoed in her ears as she opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out. The game and Lauren’s well-placed and powerful shots were running through her mind like video. Her daughter was not the failure she feared. The other players on the team looked to her for direction, grateful for her presence on the court with them—Ann could see this, read this on their faces from afar. She thought about all the games she had missed.

“She’s speechless,” said Eileen, wrapping her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulder.

Ann leaned down and kissed Lauren’s cheek. “You were amazing.”

“Thanks,” said Lauren, looking into her mother’s eyes for a connection. Ann broke away first.

“The car is out back,” she said. “Let’s hurry, so we’ll beat the rush.”

That night, as Ann lay in bed reading
Midwest Living,
her thoughts kept drifting back to the volleyball match. As soon as Mike walked into their bedroom, she started talking about it. “Didn’t we run through every point at dinner?” he asked. “Your mother would have made an awesome sports writer. She knew every detail.” He got into bed beside his wife. “I didn’t know you cared about volleyball.”

Ann turned out her bedside light. “I had no idea she was so good.” She lay thinking in the darkened room. The moon, just out of sight as Ann glanced over at the windows, softly lit the panes of glass. On another night, she might have called it peaceful, but on this night it was unsettling, an intrusion. “Mike?” she said.

“Ummm?”

“Why haven’t I gone to Lauren’s volleyball games?”

Mike slowly rolled over to face his wife. “You’re busy, Ann.”

“Too busy to go to her games, or to Nate’s football games? What kind of busy is that?”

“Regular busy?”

“Do you remember when she was little?” Ann said. “She used to follow me around like a duckling follows its mother. And at first, I found it endearing and then, at some point, I found it annoying. God, I was craving space back then. And now I have all this space.”

“You’re lucky,” Mike said. “I have no space.”

“You’ve created that condition.”

“As have you, Ann,” said Mike.

C
HAPTER
5

F
or a good reason that Ann could not recall later, Eileen had been able to talk her out of a catered Thanksgiving dinner and into a homemade meal. Eileen proposed buying all the groceries—it was the least she could do, she said—if Ann and Lauren would join her in the kitchen. Ann told her mother she would absolutely not cook all day Wednesday as well as Thursday, so Eileen agreed to preparing, serving, and eating the meal in one day. They would have to start early, however, right after a crack-of-dawn breakfast. If they worked steadily, they could have dinner on the table by 5:00 in the afternoon. Mike, who had not seen his wife spend more than five minutes cooking in the kitchen she custom-designed, requested cornbread stuffing. And Nate, who said the thought of his mother’s cooking scared him, declared he would rather eat at McDonald’s on Thanksgiving than die of food poisoning.

And so the process began. Just as Ann was finishing her Fiber One, she heard a knock at the back door. There, with a cloth grocery bag in each gloved hand, stood her mother, a thin red woolen cap on her head and a determined look on her face. Ann looked at her watch and slowly got up from the table. She opened the door, and Eileen charged past her and set the bags down on the floor. “I hope I’m not too early,” she said.

“Would it matter if I said you
were
too early?” asked Ann, taking a sip of black coffee from her mug.

Eileen unloaded potatoes, squash, celery, onions, and the pie-crusts she had made the night before onto Ann’s island countertop. “There are more bags on the counter in my kitchen. Would you be willing to walk over there and grab them? We’ll get Mike to bring the turkey. I got an eighteen-pounder. I thought we could have soup and sandwiches over the weekend. How does that sound?”

“Interesting,” said Ann, who had not thought beyond the chores of the day except to know that she did not want to spend the entire weekend with her parents, playing Scrabble, taking short walks that her mother would call exercise, and eating leftovers. She dumped her tepid coffee into the sink and put on her coat.

“Tell your father to come up to the house,” called Eileen as Ann walked out the door.

Ann wrapped her coat tightly around her as she walked down the frost-covered brick path to the guesthouse. She knocked on the door once, opened it, and walked in. She found her father in the kitchen, rooting though the silverware drawer. “I can’t find my car keys,” he said, a half-dozen forks in one hand. “I need to go out.”

“You don’t need to go out, Dad,” said Ann, approaching him tentatively. “We’ve got everything you need right here.”

Sam turned his head in Ann’s direction. “You have your coat on,” he said, “so apparently you’re going somewhere.”

Ann lightly put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ve just come down to grab the groceries Mom bought for Thanksgiving. It’s time to start making the meal.”

“Let me help you,” said Sam. “Where are we taking them?”

“Up to my house.”

Sam reached for the bags on the floor and, with effort, lifted them. “Okay,” he said. “Where to?” He was dressed in an old flannel nightshirt, his bulbous, scaly feet stuffed halfway into his sheepskin slippers.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Ann. “I’ll run these up to the house while you get some clothes on. And then I’ll come back to get you.”

“Is this a formal affair?” asked Sam.

“No,” said Ann. “Just a bit more formal than you are now.”

“Right-O,” said Sam. “I’ll be ready in a jiffy.”

Sam scurried off to the bedroom, and Ann grabbed the bags. She walked quickly up the path and into her warm kitchen, where her mother was already dicing celery on the center island.

“You found everything?” she asked, still chopping.

“I just grabbed the bags on the kitchen floor,” said Ann. “Dad was looking for car keys.”

“Yes,” said Eileen, looking up from her task. “He can spend hours doing that. I’ve had to hide all kinds of things from him. It seems cruel to me sometimes, but I know it’s for the best.”

“When did he stop driving?” asked Ann, unloading corn bread, cranberry sauce, mushrooms, green beans, and dinner rolls from a bag.

“Last winter,” said Eileen, tipping the cutting board of chopped celery into a large ceramic bowl. “I told the doctor I didn’t feel safe with him driving, and the doctor agreed. Your father hasn’t taken it too well. Remember when I told you he thought the kitchen staff at the day-care center was plotting against him? Well, that was just the latest in a string of incidents that began with the doctor. He doesn’t trust Walt at the hardware store because he wouldn’t sell him a chain saw, and he doesn’t like Jim Townsend, the attractive new bank manager, because he wouldn’t let him take twenty thousand dollars out of our savings account to buy more cows. We’ve had just two cows for the last ten years, but your father thinks he’s still in the business.”

“I don’t know how you handle this, Mother,” said Ann, removing the plastic wrapping from the pan of corn bread. “I don’t know what to do with him.”

“I didn’t know what to do, either, at first,” said Eileen, reaching for an onion. “I learn day by day, every day.”

Both women looked at the back door when they heard a knock. It was Sam, his white hair sticking out in all directions, dressed in a woman’s pink bathrobe. “Oh God,” said Ann.

Eileen put her knife down and, wiping her hands on her apron, walked to the door and opened it. “I’m looking for a place to stay,” said Sam.

“You can stay with us,” said Eileen, pulling him in out of the cold and sitting him down at the kitchen table. “But we’ve got work to do.”

“We’ve all got work to do,” said Sam to the far kitchen wall.

Eileen walked back to the island and the half-chopped onion. Ann approached her and whispered in her ear, “What are we going to do now?”

“Make Thanksgiving dinner, dear,” said Eileen, patting her daughter’s shoulder. “He won’t be any trouble.”

Sam stood. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

Ann, who couldn’t imagine where he thought he had to be dressed in his wife’s terry-cloth bathrobe, stared at him.

“How about some coffee, Sam?” asked Eileen calmly.

“I’d love a cup, thanks,” he said.

“Settle into that chair right there and I’ll get some for you,” said Eileen, pouring a cup from Ann’s pot. She brought it to the table and set it down. She patted his arm. Ann looked at her mother and then at her father and then back at her mother. “Help me chop these onions, Ann,” said Eileen, returning to the island. “We need to finish the stuffing so we can get our bird in the oven.”

“I’ll get the bird,” said Sam, spilling his coffee in his haste to stand, turn, and head for the back door.

“Mother!” said Ann.

“Go get Mike, dear,” said Eileen, rinsing her hands in the sink. “This is precisely where I’ve run into trouble.”

Ann ran out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the master bedroom, where Mike, dressed in his favorite work jeans and a flannel shirt, was brushing his teeth. “My father is outside wandering around in my mother’s bathrobe,” said Ann breathlessly. “Come quickly.”

Mike followed Ann back down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Eileen was buttoning up her coat. “I think we’re okay,” she said. “He’s just gone into our house out back.”

“What happened?” asked Mike.

“When he gets it into his head that he has someplace to go, I can’t always stop him,” said Eileen. “I’ve had a couple of really good scares. Sometimes, I just can’t reason with him.”

“What does he want to do?” asked Mike.

“He thinks he needs to be somewhere,” said Eileen. “He talks about meetings with grocery store executives as if they are still a part of his life. Or sometimes he just wants to run errands like he used to. He wants to stop in at Bill’s store for a gallon of milk or mail bills at the post office.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Mike, taking his coat from a peg on the wall and putting it on.

“Bring him back here,” said Eileen, taking off her coat. “Without Selma there, this is probably the safest place for him. Oh, and would you grab the turkey from the fridge while you’re there?”

“Can do,” said Mike on his way out the door.

“Let’s finish up the onions, honey,” said Eileen, pushing the sleeves of her white cotton turtleneck over her elbows. “They’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Five minutes later, they were back. Sam, dressed in his own bathrobe, opened the door for Mike, who was carrying the turkey as if it were an infant. “Sam decided not to get dressed,” said Mike, setting the turkey down on the counter.

“That’s okay,” said Eileen. “It’s such a process. Sometimes, if we have nowhere to go and aren’t expecting to see anyone, we just don’t bother.”

“That sounds good to me,” said Mike, taking off his coat.

“Is anyone listening to me?” asked Sam.

“We’re all listening,” said Eileen. “Let me warm up your coffee and you can sit down and tell us all about it.” When Eileen set the mug of coffee down in front of Sam, he stood up.

“No more for me,” he said. “I’ve got to get going.”

“Oh God,” said Ann, hand to her forehead.

“Let’s see if there’s something good on the History Channel,” said Eileen, taking Sam’s arm in hers. “Ann, where can your father watch television?”

“In the den,” said Ann. “Follow me.”

They walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway, past Mike’s study and the bathroom to the den. Eileen sat Sam down in the large leather chair, covered him with a leopard chenille throw, and turned on the television. She flipped through the channels until she saw World War II battleships. “There,” she said to her husband, smoothing his recalcitrant hair into place with her hand. “You watch a bit of this and you can tell me about it later.”

“Will you watch with me?”

“You start,” said Eileen. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Will he be all right in there?” asked Ann in the hallway, thinking about her expensive furniture, coffee table books, and table adornments as much as her father’s troubling condition.

“I think so,” said Eileen. “Let’s lock all the doors to the house anyway, just in case. He’s agitated today.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure,” said Eileen. “Some days he’s fine and others he’s a real handful.”

Ten minutes later, as Ann was dumping her onions into the large ceramic bowl with the other stuffing ingredients, Sam walked into the kitchen. “I’d like to help,” he said.

Ann looked at her mother. “I’ve got an idea,” said Eileen. “Do you think Mike would take him back to our house for a while and keep him company? I’ve got a new jigsaw puzzle for him.”

“You can ask him,” said Ann. “He’s working in his study.”

As soon as Eileen left the room, Sam spoke to Ann. “What’s your name, young lady?”

“I’m your daughter,” said Ann, her temples pounding.

“You’re kidding,” said Sam, the beginning of a smile on his chapped lips.

“No, I’m not,” said Ann, returning her attention to the bowl with the stuffing.

“You
are
putting me on, because my daughter lives far away,” said Sam. “She’s so important now that she never calls or visits.” Ann lifted her face to her father. “There you are, Annie,” he said, approaching her. “It’s so good to see you.” Ann accepted his hug, and then she slowly put her arms around him and laid her head against his chest. His bathrobe smelled like home. “We thought we’d lost you.” When she was little, there was nothing her father’s broad, solid chest couldn’t cure, from a scraped knee to a troublesome dream in the night to a disappointing afternoon. She spent most of her time with her mother, in easy conversation with ready affirmation, but it was her father’s approval she sought. He had not been effusive with praise, neither to his farmhands nor to his family. This was not because he was tough and mean; rather, he had strict standards and high expectations. A “job well done” from him made her feel euphoric, like, she would learn later, being drunk. This man in her kitchen now? Her mother was doing a good job of pretending, but Ann’s real father, she could see every time she searched his eyes, was either deeply hidden, like a hibernating bear in a den beneath layers of snow and ice, or had simply chosen to vacate his body.

“Here they are,” said Eileen as she and Mike walked into the kitchen. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” said Ann, who had pulled away but was still examining her father’s face.

Mike stepped forward and put his arm around Sam’s shoulder. “Let’s head down to your house,” he said. “I hear we have some puzzling to do.”

“Now there’s a capital idea,” said Sam, allowing Mike to turn his shoulders and steer him toward the back door.

Ann kissed her husband on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said softly.

Mike nodded and then looked at his watch. “In one hour, wake Nate and tell him to come see me.”

 

The time passed quickly. Ann and her mother stuffed the turkey and put it in the oven. Eileen peeled five pounds of potatoes, and set them on the stove to boil. Ann peeled, chopped, and boiled the butternut squash, following the instructions on the
Mama’s Butternut Squash Soup
recipe card Eileen had handwritten for the occasion. While it cooled, she chopped an onion and minced some fresh sage. Eileen washed the lettuce for the pear and cream cheese salad. All the while, she resurrected stories about their life together decades before. “Remember that Saturday when your dad took you fishing?”

“Fishing?”

“You were twelve or thirteen at the time,” said Eileen, over the metallic scraping sound of Ann whisking the onions into the soup.

“Oh yes,” said Ann, adding salt and pepper. “We went to that river in the next county, with the silly name.”

“Fish River,” said Eileen, gently breaking apart the lettuce leaves. “I can’t remember what the real name is, but everybody called it Fish River.”