What Nora Knew (11 page)

I was two and my mother pregnant with Jocelyn when we moved into the Roslyn ranch house. My parents joined a
country club even though my mother doesn’t play bridge and my father doesn’t like golf, but he said country-club membership made good business sense. He’ll do anything if it makes good business sense. They attend country-club dances, eat country-club buffets, and swim in the country-club pool. At home, my father bought his fish tank and set up a Ping-Pong table in the basement. He’s an excellent player and hustled his way through several semesters’ worth of college tuition thanks to his finesse with a paddle. He’s spent most of his marriage grumbling, “Goddammit, Bitsy! How’s a man supposed to play Ping-Pong when the table’s covered with laundry!” It’s a running joke. Ever since the Costco opened less than five miles away in Westbury, the Ping-Pong table is also stacked with Kirkland fabric softener, Kirkland paper towels, and Kirkland tissue boxes, along with Costco-size ketchup bottles and boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes the size of studio apartments. Overflow items are stored in my parents’ garage, next to dried-out gallons of Benjamin Moore paint, rakes, brooms, a snowblower, lawn mower, and a couple of cars. I haven’t seen my father play Ping-Pong since I wore a night guard.

For the longest time I wondered what interests my parents had in common aside from raising a family, and what would hold their marriage together once their three daughters were grown and out of the house. I was too young to see the nuances of their connection. My parents are happy. They adore each other’s quirks. I envy couples like them, the ones who get it right from the get-go. How’d my mother really know that the young man she met in a Village music bar
would build her a lifetime pedestal? What was it about Ziggy Grossman that earned my grandmother’s fierce beyond-the-grave devotion? Did it take blind love—or blind luck?

When Evan turned out to be
Evan,
my family circled the wagons and changed the narrative. He was a snake-oil salesman. He was never sincere. He was trouble from the get-go. He went from being Son-in-Law Extraordinaire to (hushed voice)
Molly’s mistake
. They’re eager for me to find a replacement, but they’ve never rushed to embrace any of the new boyfriends I’ve served up.

Russell hates accompanying me to Long Island. He claims his hay fever gets aggravated from all the trees and lawns. He had to work the Saturday before Father’s Day and bowed out on taking the train to Roslyn on Sunday. He said he needed to stay home and call his father. Apparently he thinks Roslyn doesn’t have phone service to St. Louis.

When I first brought Russell to Long Island, I’d say the reviews were mixed. I’d also say that now that I’ve reached age thirty-nine, expectations for me have lowered.

“Does he like the Knicks?” my father asked.

“Does he give family discounts?” Jocelyn asked.

Lisa’s never met Russell, so her opinion doesn’t count.

“Nice looking,” my mother said. “He reminds me of someone I’ve seen in the movies. Although I can’t remember the actor’s name or what he looks like.” But she’s quick to point out to anyone who’ll listen that “Molly’s dating a doctor.”

“No, she’s not,” my grandma Shirley will say. “She’s dating a chiropractor.”

My grandmother’s never had back problems, and even if she did, she believes chiropractors are scam-artist, crooked quacks. And now you know the real reason Russell didn’t join my family for Father’s Day weekend.

Saturday afternoon the adults sat around on the patio while my father grilled burgers. Saturday night the adults sat around on the patio while my father grilled ribs. Sunday afternoon, in honor of Father’s Day, the adults sat around the patio while the day’s honoree grilled sirloins. The boys played in the aboveground pool. Every few minutes Lisa would look up from her rum and Coke and holler out, “Don’t drown!”

You couldn’t drown in our pool if you tried. It can barely hold an inner tube, but even so, it’s ruined a sizable section of lawn. My father complains about this throughout the fall and early winter until the first snow. He would have gotten rid of the pool twenty years ago, but my mother insists on keeping it for her grandsons’ visits.

“How’s everyone want their steak?” my father asked.

“Rare!” my grandmother said, then rolled her eyes.

It doesn’t matter what you answer, the steaks will come out burnt.

Jocelyn and I had already set the outdoor table with the Fiesta ware and plastic cups. We’d straightened the seat cushions—the beautifully upholstered seat cushions—and carried out the tubs of Costco coleslaw and Costco potato salad. The containers were larger than the pool. Lisa doesn’t help with preparations. She has parlayed her position as the youngest daughter into the lifetime role of princess. She’s
recently taken up an interest in something called Pinterest, a website that allows her to sit at her computer for hours gathering images of candleholders and red-velvet cakes and press-on fingernail patterns. Jocelyn, on the other hand, is focused on making use of her Wharton degree and is too busy to date or produce children. As my father’s executive vice-president she has put herself in charge of franchising the business. So far she’s sold one franchise in Teaneck, New Jersey, and is negotiating for a second in Stamford, Connecticut. She’s inherited my father’s talent for salesmanship. We don’t know where she gets her ruthlessness.

I love my sisters dearly; I just can’t believe we came out of the same womb.

My father sawed into his steak and tasted his first bite. The boys wrangled over the ketchup bottle. My mother poured lemonade into everyone’s plastic cup from a Minute Maid carton. Jocelyn checked her watch. She’s always checking her watch, even when she has nowhere to go. “Perfect!” my father said.

“Overcooked,” Shirley said. “You’ve got the palate of a corpse.”

“Best steak I’ve ever made,” he said. When it comes to his mother-in-law, he also has the hearing of a corpse.

Six months earlier my grandmother moved into independent living. She’s in a building on the water that looks like a Civil War plantation with big white columns. Lisa particularly loves it. The only reason my grandmother even considered such a lifestyle change was because she got into
a huge fight with her former building’s condominium association over their choice of new lobby wallpaper and taught them all a lesson by selling her place and moving out. She also complains about the food at independent living. “Last night dry salmon, and now this,” she said, snatching the ketchup out of Tate IV’s hand. The boys wolfed down frankfurters. Travis dropped a spoonful of potato salad on the ground. Tate IV spilled his lemonade. My mind wandered to Deirdre, wondering if she was reading my article over the weekend. And if I’d still have a job after the weekend.

“Can we go swim now?” Travis asked.

“Yeah, I’m done!” Tate IV said, pushing back his plate while my mother mopped the lemonade spill.

“Wanna come swim, Aunt Molly?” Travis said.

“No thanks, sweetie. The pool’s a little snug.”

“Why don’t you work on your Father’s Day cards for Grandpa?” Lisa said.

“Let them swim,” my mother said.

“Aren’t they supposed to wait an hour?” Lisa’s hair was done up in a French twist, the hairdo she’d adopted when she moved South. Her tank top was pink, her shorts lime green; she only wears pastels. The life of a Southern belle suits her.

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” my mother said.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! Do you think I’d send my own grandsons to their deaths?”

“Okay,” Lisa said. The boys ran off in the direction of the pool with Lisa calling after them, “Don’t drown!”

“The boys are lovely,” my mother said.

“The cutest,” I said.

“Wild Indians,” my grandmother said.

“Grandma, have you made friends at your new place?” Lisa asked. We are all careful not to use the word
home.

“It’s dog-eat-dog in there,” she said. “A man with a pulse isn’t halfway unpacked before those women are all over him batting their cataracts and clucking their dentures.”

“Maybe you’ll meet a boyfriend,” I said.

“Forget it. Any man I’d meet in that place would be a saggy old geezer. And I don’t believe in settling.”

“What have you got against companionship?” my mother asked.

My grandmother made a
harrumph
sound. “If I want a companion, I’ll buy a dog.”

I said, “Grandma, what’s wrong with a mature relationship between two adults who respect each other and enjoy each other’s company? I think it’s smarter to look for long-term values.”

“I’m eighty-four years old. Screw long-term values. Unless someone delivers on the bells and whistles, who needs it?”

“I agree,” Jocelyn said. She was wearing a pantsuit and pearls, which might be all you need to know about my sister Jocelyn.

“Well, you shouldn’t agree,” Shirley said. “You need to get laid.”

“Mother!” my mother said.

“Grandma!” my sister said.

“But once you do get laid,” my grandmother told her, “hold out for romance. Everything else you can get from a friend.”

“Tate’s very romantic,” Lisa said. “Just the other night he gave me a neck rub.”

“You’ve got a six-year-old boy giving you neck rubs?” my grandmother said.

“My husband Tate,” Lisa said. “Tate the Third.”

“Ridiculous Southern names,” my grandmother said.

“Anyone want more steak?” my father asked.

“Well, I don’t plan to settle,” Jocelyn said. She checked her watch. “I want a man who cherishes me.”

“Maybe you should go on Match,” Lisa said. “You aren’t going to meet anyone on Long Island.”

“There are plenty of men on Long Island,” Jocelyn said.

“Married men,” I said.

“I wonder if you and I would have been paired on Match,” my mother said to my dad. They were sitting side by side. She elbowed him and smiled like a schoolgirl.

“Absolutely,” my father said, “as soon as I wrote ‘searching for a woman who can decoupage.’ ”

“Ziggy Grossman was the most romantic man I ever met,” my grandmother said. “Started every morning by making me breakfast. Two fried eggs and buttered toast.”

“Oh, that is romantic,” Lisa said. “Up until the day he died?”

“Up until my cholesterol went to hell.”

“Sid took me to see a romantic movie the other night,” my mother said.
“Bridesmaids.”
My dad chuckled. My mother did
not. Anyone other than my father could tell she was being sarcastic.

“I heard it’s amusing,” Jocelyn said.

“I want to see it,” I said.

“I saw it,” Lisa said. “It’s not for children.”

My mother clasped her heart. It would have been a lovely gesture if a tiny glob of potato salad wasn’t on her index finger. “Nobody makes great romantic comedies anymore,” she said. “I saw
Desk Set
on TV last week. Did you know it was written by Nora Ephron’s parents?”

“Never heard of it,” Lisa said. “Travis, don’t splash!”

“A darling movie,” my mother said. “Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.”

My grandmother flapped her hand like she was swatting a bug. “They were both ancient in that movie. The two of ’em half-dead.”

“Katharine wears the most beautiful dresses,” my mother said. “How do you suppose somebody working in a research library could afford those dresses? Or a New York apartment with a working fireplace?”

“You realize we’re talking about a movie, right?” I said. “Make-believe?”

“Everyone in it’s happy. Nothing’s raunchy. Nothing’s crude. Gig Young was dating Katharine Hepburn for seven years and they never had sex.”

“Says who?” my grandmother said.

“It was the fifties, they weren’t allowed to have sex,” my mother said.

“Were you allowed to be gay in the fifties?” Jocelyn asked.

“Katharine bought Gig Young a bathrobe for Christmas,” my grandmother said. “You don’t buy someone a robe if you aren’t having sex with them.”

“Grandma, you buy me robes all the time,” Lisa said.

My mother snapped the lid shut on the coleslaw container. “Well, anything Judd Apatow produces is raunchy, not romantic, like in Nora’s movies.”

“
Julie & Julia
shows older people having sex,” my father said.

“She implies it, she doesn’t show it,” my mother said.

“Stanley Tucci I could enjoy seeing naked,” my grandmother said. “Spencer Tracy, no.”

We cleared the table and my mother brought out a decorated cake from Stop & Shop; the boys scrambled out of the pool and sang “Happy Father’s Day, Dear Grandpa” and gave my dad the cards they hadn’t finished drawing. Dad opened the same gifts he opens every year. Aftershave he doesn’t wear. Golf sweaters he doesn’t need. And two dozen Ping-Pong balls that would end up stored in the basement with the supersize ketchup bottles and corn flakes. My father got all misty-eyed, said a few words about the greatest joy in a man’s life was being surrounded by his family. He stood, lifted his lemonade glass, and made a toast. “To the mother of my children,” he said, turning to the mother of his children. “The reason we’re celebrating today.” She looked up at him with such adoration. “Bitsy, you gorgeous broad you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since I first set eyes on you. I don’t need
romantic movies. You are the star of the movie of my life.” He leaned over and kissed her as Travis shoved a handful of cake into his brother’s face.

*  *  *

The passengers on the train back to Manhattan were carrying Tupperware containers, foil packages, and bulging plastic grocery bags. I turned down my mother’s offer to wrap some slaw to take home. I was carrying my purse and
The Great Gatsby.
After transferring at Jamaica, I jaggedly swayed through the cars, gripping seatbacks for balance, as the train rumbled beneath my steps. In the rush for seats, I’d flunked out.

“This taken?” I mimed to a guy silently bobbing his head, wired to his iTunes, sitting next to a gym bag. He pretended to doze off. I kept walking. Someday I’ll write my opinion of people who hog train seats with backpacks.

Going home had felt good. My family has its share of wackiness, but I consider them my emotional landing place, the one constant in a constantly changing terrain. I thought about my parents and my father’s toast and how it must feel to star in the movie of someone’s life. To experience that much love. That much acceptance. I spotted two open seats in the front of the car, across from one another on opposite sides of the aisle. Over one I saw a poster advertising Lipitor, how it was good for your heart. Over the other, Cameron Duncan’s latest crime novel, along with a photo of him, grinning that off-center grin of his. Even in a photograph I felt as if he were looking right through me in a way that made me shiver. I chose the seat beneath the drug.