The Road Taken (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Joan reran what had happened that afternoon in the driveway as if it had been a movie, over and over every day; but to save herself from her desperate guilt and grief, in order to stay sane, she spooled it backward until it had not happened and Marianne was alive. Marianne had not run in back of the car; she had stayed on the lawn. Joan had not backed up the station wagon. No one had wanted ice cream. Joan was not a monster, and the peaceful calm of their sisterly afternoon was untouched.

But of course, that was only her wish, and before she squeezed her eyelids tightly shut to try to block out the picture that remained on her brain, she saw again the image of little blond pigtails covered with blood. Everyone hated her, she was sure of that, but no one hated her more than herself.

Every day she went to work, relieved to be out of the house and among strangers, and at night when she returned home she imagined all of them looking at her with revulsion. The truth (when she told it repeatedly to herself, also to stay sane), was that Rose looked sad, which was natural; that her father looked inscrutable, because he was sad; Celia, when she came to visit, made small talk as always and had no opinion; Ginger was busy with her own life; and Uncle Hugh, who at first had seemed bewildered, now looked happy because he was moving in with his boyfriend.

Joan had never seen Peggy again after the funeral, and she knew why. Peggy could not stand the sight of her. She wondered if they would ever speak to each other again, much less with love. What Peggy did, Ed did, and so he was gone forever too. Joan realized she missed him.

Was it only months that had passed, or was it years? She had no sense of time anymore. The others went to visit Peggy and came back without a word of encouragement. A large moving van arrived and took all Uncle Hugh’s furniture and many boxes of clothing out of the house, while he supervised, and then he was gone. Their town house, where the girls had grown up, seemed emptier now. Except for Ginger, who was a part of the eccentric triumvirate that included her, Uncle Hugh, and his lover, Teddy, the others made only one pilgrimage to his new home in a tall Greenwich Village apartment building, for a lavish family dinner party, because Hugh had been so eager for them to see it. The event was a housewarming of sorts, although his friends from his real life were not there, and the family brought presents. Even Joan went to that. Peggy and Ed, of course, did not.

Joan thought she shouldn’t look askance at Ginger for hanging around with Uncle Hugh and his boyfriend; at least she had somebody, everyone had somebody, except for herself. It was not that she couldn’t find a pal or a lover, there were plenty of those from the past and others unknown waiting for her in the future, but she felt too horrible about herself to try to be friendly. Slowly, she distanced herself from everyone she knew. She didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened that day in Larchmont, but there was nothing else on her mind. Her new routine was work and home.

But she didn’t feel as if the place she lived was her home anymore. There were too many memories, too much guilt. What Joan really wanted, since she couldn’t wipe out the past, was to obliterate herself. Had she been a suicidal person she would have tried overdosing on pills or cutting her wrists, but that had never been her nature. Her self-destructive impulses were more sociable. She wanted to vanish. She realized she had to go.

Go where? Anywhere that no one in the family could find her. Away so that Peggy and Ed would forget her. Away from the sight of all those disappointed familial faces and their noble hypocrisy. She was a pariah and she had to flee.

She went down to the Lower East Side and rented a railroad flat for forty dollars a month in a tenement filled with noisy families who didn’t speak English. It had the usual bathtub in the kitchen and toilet in the hall, but at least the toilet was her own. She bought a cheap single bed and had it delivered, and some sheets and blankets from a pushcart in the street. They were secondhand, but clean and soft. The apartment suited her, although during those few days of transition she was still living with her family, preparing to vanish. The apartment was like a cell and she the penitent. There was a small hole in the wall that someone had dug with a knife, and Joan imagined him as another prisoner, planning his escape.

She quit her job. She took what little money she had saved out of the bank, and packed her things in two suitcases. She could not bear to leave New York, to go too far away from the family she loved, so she would lie to them. She would hide in plain sight and they would never know. It was possible to disappear into a city as complex and various as New York and never be seen again. Joan knew that; she had seen it happen before.

“I’m going away to live in California,” she told her parents.

“But why?” Rose asked.

“Maybe you can stand the sight of my face, but I can’t,” Joan said. “My plane leaves tonight. I’ll let you know where I am when I get there. Meanwhile you can write to me at this post office box number in New York, which belongs to a friend who will forward my mail.”

“But why can’t
I
forward your mail?” Rose asked.

“I need to cut contact for a while,” Joan said.

“Please don’t go, Joan,” Rose said. “Things will work out. Just give it some more time.”

“I have no more time,” Joan said. “Kiss me good-bye, Mom.”

Her parents looked stricken. “What will you do for money?” Ben asked.

“I’ll get a job.”

“They won’t pay you enough to live decently,” he said. “I want you to live decently.”

Joan shrugged.

“I’ll send you money,” Ben said. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and emptied it. “Here’s what I have right now, two hundred dollars because I went to the bank today, and next week I’ll send you more.”

“I can live on two hundred dollars for a month,” Joan said.

“No, you can’t.”

“Oh, Joan . . . ,” her mother said, and embraced her. “I won’t try to stop you. I know how much you’ve been suffering. Maybe a new place, new scenery, a new life, will make you feel better. And then you’ll come back, won’t you? When you’re happy again?”

“If I’m happy again,” Joan said. What was one more little lie? She knew she would never be happy and she would never be back.

She didn’t say good-bye to Ginger because Ginger liked to ask too many questions. She was gone before Ginger came home from school. The next to last thing Joan saw from the window of her taxi was her mother’s tearful face, and the last thing was the house she had been born in and loved. Standing there on the sidewalk to see her off, her parents had been holding hands. She had seldom seen that. Joan realized that even though they were not physically demonstrative, at least not in front of the children, her parents really needed each other and had a rich affection. They would comfort each other when she was gone. She watched them grow smaller. She had the cab go uptown until they disappeared from her view, and it from theirs, and then she had it turn and take her downtown to her new life.

She was miserable and homesick in her secret apartment, but she was safe. No one could hate her anymore. The first thing she did was cut off her hair. That long, silky, blond hair that had been her eccentric trademark became an Audrey Hepburn pixie cut like everybody else’s. She was a girl of the fifties now, and she could fit in. She got a job as a waitress in a tacky restaurant where no one she knew would ever think to go. As a last touch she changed her name. Joan Coleman, instead of Carson. She didn’t want to change her first name because she was afraid she wouldn’t answer. She took her new identity from the telephone book, where there were a lot of women with her adopted name. In any case, she didn’t have to worry about her family looking her up in the phone book because she didn’t have a phone. Let them look for her in California.

As the months went on she began to like the colorful street life of her neighborhood, which at first had only seemed sleazy. She was not overly friendly, but people knew her; the woman who sold her things from what had become her favorite pushcart, the man who sold her pickles and lox. Bit by bit Joan furnished her apartment with household goods that had belonged to other people. The objects cried out to her, with the voices of the people who had lived with them before, and drowned out the voices in her mind from her own past.

Christmas week was so difficult that she called her parents from the phone that belonged to another waitress in the restaurant where she worked. Her mother had sent her a Christmas present, to the post office box: a silver compact from Georg Jensen that Joan had long wanted. When they heard each other’s voices Joan and her mother both wept.

“Thank you for my gift,” Joan said.

“Where are you?” Rose cried.

“I’m living in Sausalito,” Joan lied. “In Marin County, near San Francisco. It’s very pretty. I’m working in a bookstore again.”

“Oh, Joan, please come to visit us for Christmas. We’ll send you the ticket. Everyone is coming from Bristol to New York this year, and we’re having a big dinner at our house.”

“How is Peggy?” Joan asked, by way of response.

There was a moment of silence. “Well, the holidays have been hard for her,” Rose said. “But they’re difficult for everyone. Joan, can’t I at least have your phone number and address?”

“I’m moving soon,” Joan said. “How’s Ginger? How’s Uncle Hugh?”

“They’re all fine. Are you well? Do you have friends?”

“Of course,” Joan said. “I have to go now. Give my love to Dad.”

“I’ll put him on. Wait.”

“Joan . . .” When she heard her father’s voice Joan started to cry again. “Come home,” he said. “We miss you.”

“I can’t,” Joan said. “Merry Christmas. Say Merry Christmas to Mom,” and she hung up.

Christmas Eve was unbearable, so although she was not religious, Joan went to church. She hoped Hugh and Teddy would not decide to go to the same one. She sat far in the back and listened to the music and looked at the colorful stained glass windows, and prayed for Peggy to forgive her, to find some happiness again, to have another baby. When the service was finished she walked for a while and then took a subway uptown to the Village. It was after midnight, and the streets were empty. She walked to the house on West 10th Street where her family lived, and stood across the street in the shadows, looking up at their lighted windows.

In their living room she could see the ceiling-high tree, glorious with ornaments, with presents piled beneath it. Apparently no one was asleep yet. Aunt Maude would be there, and Uncle Walter, and Aunt Daisy and her husband, and all the cousins, and Celia, and maybe even Aunt Harriette and Julius. Uncle Hugh and Teddy, probably, come home to the family. She wondered if Peggy and Ed were there, with Peter, now that she was gone from their sight. She knew the family had been having wine and eggnog, and thin cookies shaped like stars and crescents, and that tomorrow they would be having a big holiday meal. Joan’s mouth watered, imagining it, and she realized she had forgotten to eat.

Don’t think you’re the Little Match Girl, Joan told herself. This was your own choice. She didn’t deserve to eat, she didn’t deserve multiple presents, she didn’t deserve the arms of her family around her. If she wasn’t careful, someone would look out of the window and see her loitering there.

She left and went back downtown to her self-imposed jail. For once, finally, after all the terrible things that had happened, she realized she was in control. It gave her some kind of comfort to think that, even though she wasn’t quite sure why.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Everyone was leaving, Ginger thought. She had not minded losing Peggy to marriage and motherhood and the suburbs, because that was natural, and she was happy for Uncle Hugh, who had found Teddy and an apartment to share with him. But Joan’s defection frightened her. If Joan had simply moved out to be on her own, even if she had gone to another city, that would have been natural too. She would have kept up, they would have followed her career, or whatever. But Joan in hiding, incommunicado, made a terrible loss in the house.

Their mother tried to be brave, but Ginger knew she was devastated. No one could have stopped this chain of events, it was Marianne’s death that had started it; but even knowing this, the feeling of being completely powerless frightened Rose. I guess I’m all my mother has now, Ginger thought, and she wondered if she would ever have a life of her own.

She was still hopelessly in love with Christopher Riley. He was happy at B.U., he told her on the phone, he was liking cellular biology as much as she was, and still dreaming of becoming a doctor, as she was; and he had a new girlfriend. He had been reluctant to tell her about the existence of the girlfriend because he knew these things hurt her even though she had no right to be hurt. The two of them knew each other so well after all this time that it was as if they had known each other all their lives, and it was impossible to keep a secret for long. It hadn’t taken much for Ginger to pry the information out of him. She teased him then, of course, and Chris was uncomfortable, because he knew Ginger was making a joke of it for all the wrong reasons.

The new girlfriend was not in a wheelchair. It was sad how men could always find someone, Ginger thought, while women had to be perfect. If she could have been able to walk she would no doubt have focused on her other imperfections, but being the way she was, her legs became everything. Why couldn’t Chris love her? They had a world of things in common, they always had. Her brain told her that even though you had everything in common with someone else it didn’t mean he would love you. The deeper, unreasonable, primitive part of her remembered the way they had been together in Warm Springs, and the seductive way he had put his tongue into her mouth when he kissed her good-bye at his parents’ house, and the beast won. Eventually, Ginger knew, Chris would get tired of all those other girls and realize she was the one he needed to spend the rest of his life with.

She had friends now at college, some of whom were commuters, like herself, and some of whom lived in the dorms. She longed for that dorm life, and envied them in a way, and she knew many of the other commuters did too. They were all aware that it was different being a commuter than living in the dorms because they were not thrown into the intimate social life of communal living; but nevertheless it was easier for the other commuters than it was for her because they could go anywhere.

By now some of Ginger’s new friends invited her to come along with them when they did things in groups, but she still didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn’t go on study dates, she didn’t get taken to the movies or out alone for a beer. If she had gone to the movies with a date, in any case she would have had to sit separately; most movie theaters didn’t even have a place for people like her. She couldn’t go on buses and subways. Ginger knew by now that things weren’t going to change; everyone thought of her as the freak Chris had warned her she would be. You couldn’t not notice her. She couldn’t just fit in.

Once, when she had been at a Saturday night party with a group of boys and girls drinking, one of the boys had gotten so drunk he had grabbed the back of her wheelchair and started wheeling her around too fast, spinning her, whooping, as if she were a toy, someone who didn’t exist. If she had been capable of violence Ginger would have smashed his face. As it was, their friends made him stop. She held back her angry tears, but she was shaking.

“He’s plastered,” someone said.

“It was just in fun,” someone else said.

I will not be the cripple who is a good sport, Ginger thought; I am not Quasimodo. “It wasn’t fun for
me,
” she said.

The next day he apologized and asked her out for coffee to make amends. His name was Jerry. The two of them sat at a small table in a Village coffeehouse, and everything he said Ginger found superficial and boring. He told her about other occasions when he had gotten drunk, and he seemed proud of it. He told her, with delight, about a party where all the boys threw up. She wondered if Jerry had tormented her because he secretly liked her, as if he were a ten-year-old. She couldn’t imagine liking him.

“My sister used to work here,” Ginger told him.

“As what?”

“A waitress, and she sometimes read poetry.”

“Why would your sister be a waitress?” he asked. “Your father’s a lawyer, you live in that big house.”

“Don’t be a snob,” Ginger said. She had no desire to explain or make excuses for Joan. Chris would have understood.

How much she missed Chris when she was out with someone she didn’t like. How much she missed Joan all the time, when she had hardly even noticed her when she was there.

My first college date, she thought. He didn’t ask her out again.

“Why don’t you invite some friends over?” Rose suggested.

“Oh, I have too much work.” She was getting all A’s, partly because she was smart and partly because she studied so much.

“You know, Ginger, your college years are very special, not only because you’re learning things that will help you in your life, but because all those intelligent young people, the same age, are gathered together in the same place. If you were friendlier . . .”

“Friendlier? How do you know I’m not friendly?”

Rose ignored that. “I’m sure in your classes you must meet a lot of men.”

“You call them
men
?”

“Isn’t that what you call them—college men?”

“Ha,” Ginger said.

“You know, I was thinking, you should have a group of friends over once a week. Boys, men, whatever you call them. And girls. You could have a salon.”

“That’s from your day, Mom.”

Rose smiled wistfully. “I see you as the center of attention. These things can be done, Ginger. An eccentricity doesn’t have to be a liability, it can become an asset. People have become leaders who stand up less often than you do.”

“My wheelchair is an eccentricity?”

“Uncle Hugh would call it a fashion accessory,” Rose said. They both smiled.

“I wish Chris lived in New York,” Ginger said.

“But he has his own life now, dear.”

“I’ll never find anyone else who’s right for me.”

“That’s what you say now. It isn’t true, believe me.”

“It is.”

“Let me tell you something,” Rose said. “This is an old story from long ago, so everyone forgot it, but it isn’t a secret. When I was your age I was engaged to a boy from Bristol, whom I’d known all my life.”

“Before Dad?”

“Well, I’d met your father too, but I wasn’t interested. I was interested in the boy named Tom.”

How curious, Ginger thought. Her mother so much in love with someone else, not her father, that she intended to marry him? Well, of course she must have dated other guys, but engaged? “But you didn’t marry him.”

“He died of the flu during the war. The epidemic in World War I.”

“Oh . . .” She tried to picture her mother being her age. She’d seen the family photos and heard the anecdotes, but this was something she could not have imagined. “I’m sorry,” Ginger said. “Were you devastated?”

“I was. And I was in mourning for years. Your father came around to court me, but I still wasn’t interested. Then we began to depend on each other. The way you depend on Christopher.”

“Everything in common, you mean.”

“Yes, eventually I discovered that. But when I knew Tom I was sure that he was the one I had everything in common with.”

“But you didn’t?”

“For then I did. But later not. Ginger, there will be someone else for you. I promise you. You’re going to change. This boy you love so much is going to change too, or maybe he won’t, but I guarantee you there is no one road for anybody. You must force yourself to have new friends.”

So Mom was in love with someone else. And now she seemed so happy with Dad. Ginger sighed. Those old people were another species entirely; you thought you knew them and then they surprised you. She wanted to think of her parents as secure and devoted, but not as sexual beings, courting, mourning, moving on. It was normal of her to feel that way. And how could she have a “salon” anyway? Who would come?

“If I have a party,” Ginger said, “would you let us have champagne?”

Rose hesitated for only a moment. “I could put it in the punch, how’s that?”

“Everyone will love it. They’re used to drinking punch with things in it, believe me.” They would come if there was booze, she knew. Alcohol was always a draw. And the ones who got drunk would never be asked back.

She invited twenty people to come over the following Sunday afternoon. To her surprise, they all came. Rose had supplied various kinds of sandwiches, and there was the promised punch with champagne in it. Ginger eschewed her Elvis records for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, because they were more sophisticated, and because people wouldn’t be impelled to dance. Rose and Ben went out, leaving Ginger with her guests, since having one’s parents around, while it would ensure decorum, would ruin everything.

She was in her own house, and it was not like other parties she’d been to; it was better. Something about the decor of an elegant home and the food and alcohol nicely presented, the soft jazz background, and herself as hostess, in charge, made everyone behave differently toward her. They were actually enjoying themselves, Ginger realized. She was so busy supervising that she didn’t have time to worry about being a wallflower. She had to talk to everyone, and to make sure they talked to each other. And because she was not nervous she was able to be herself. The guests stayed until Rose and Ben came home at suppertime, and even then they wandered away rather reluctantly, to their homework and austere little dorm rooms, or to their crowded apartments with their families who couldn’t afford to send them to a dorm, much less supply them with these festive things as hers could.

“I think it was a success,” Ginger said.

“Then you must do it again next Sunday,” Rose said. “Make it a tradition.”

“Mom, I can’t throw you out every Sunday. It isn’t fair.”

“We went to the Metropolitan Museum,” Ben said. “We saw the Impressionists. I was thinking how New Yorkers use so little of this city that tourists enjoy. We put everything off. I rather like being a Sunday tourist.”

“I’m making a list of things to do, places to go,” Rose said. “I have you to thank, for shaking us up.”

“They won’t want to come again next week,” Ginger said. “Don’t get too excited.”

For the second “salon” she invited some of the people from the first one and several new faces. To her surprise, they all showed up, again. Ginger realized it wasn’t just the idea of a free party, although that certainly was a draw, but because they’d had a good time and they liked her. They thought she was worldly, cultivated, glamorous. Amazingly, no one crashed. They seemed too intimidated. Her guests stayed as late as they had the week before, and when they left a few of them said, “I hope you invite me to the next one.”

So she had to have another “salon” the next week; what else could she do? There was now a core group of friends she liked to be with, and then there were additions. The number of guests rose from twenty to thirty. They filled her family’s living room; Ben had to set out bridge chairs. After the third Sunday a good-looking boy she had sometimes talked to in her chemistry class, who she didn’t think cared at all about her, came up to her after class and said, actually sounding hurt, “Why didn’t you invite me? You invited some of my friends. I heard your parties are great and I really want to come.”

“I have to keep the number down,” Ginger said. “I can’t have more than thirty-five. But you can come next week.”

Who would have dreamed that people would be inviting themselves to her little social events?

During reading period and midterm exams she called the parties off, and everyone studied. But afterward she started them again. She was beginning to be concerned about how much money her parents were spending to make her popular, but they insisted they didn’t mind. After all, Rose said, it was only sandwiches, and the amount of champagne in fruit punch was inconsequential. Still, Ginger saw the empty bottles waiting outside for the garbage collector and wondered if people would have liked her if she were poor.

If I
were
poor, she told herself, I would serve bread and cheese and Chianti, and they would still show up. It’s the idea they like. They have someplace to go every Sunday afternoon when they’re depressed from their Saturday night hangovers, and they feel chosen. She was a hostess, she was popular, she had a social life now, albeit on her own territory—wheeling around on her chair as if she were the virgin queen on her throne and her family’s living room her little kingdom. If I asked boring people, she told herself, no one would come after a while.

But of course, Ginger realized, she would never know. Boys still didn’t try to date her in a romantic way. They weren’t quite sure what to do with her. They should ask Christopher, Ginger thought. He would tell them. Chris Riley was still her ideal man, and no matter what her mother did to open the world to her, nothing had happened to make her feel any other way.