Where We Are Now (15 page)

“She wants me to keep Kate and Sally awhile, a week maybe. She asked me to, Carter.” She sat down on the sofa letting herself go slack against the pillows, looking like she'd had the wind knocked out of her.

“You going to?”

“What do you think?”

He could have pointed out Marianne and Marsh had a lot of friends. There were plenty of others they could have called on. Hard as she'd been for years, she was the one fortunate enough to be chosen.

“She needs some time by herself she says.”

Again he nodded. He could already see the world widening again as her arms opened to encircle Marianne and the two girls.

S
o far,
about thirty years after his divorce, my cousin Fergus hasn't remarried. He was married to someone called Dorothy for about two years. We speculated about her though none of us had known her well—which led to even more speculation. In our small family we always referred to Dorothy as Fergus's first wife. Everybody keeps hoping there will be a second.

When he called from Nashville to say he was inviting Marshall and me to a barbecue to celebrate his parents fifty-five years of marriage, I knew better than to make any smart remarks to Fergus. He was happily organizing the party.

“I've already got the band picked out.”

I didn't think Uncle Phillip and Aunt Lucy liked the kind of music Fergus taped at his recording studio, but I knew they would put up with country-western all day and all night if that was what he wanted. His preferences were generally heeded. For a long time after he and Dorothy divorced Aunt Lucy, who seemed the most bewildered about it, insisted she would never understand why they had parted, a remark made at the dining table where we were all gathered when I visited. She was habitually unable to ask touchy questions directly, so when she voiced this mild exclamation, Fergus, who understood her too well, scraped his chair back from the table, excused himself, crumpled his napkin next to his plate, and vanished through the door to the kitchen. A moment later we heard the outside door click softly behind him. I could never get away with this even if I'd tried to. I'd have to stay and fight. If Marshall and I ever got divorced, I'd have to have my say, and I'd expect my family to take my side. Not Fergus. He might care what they thought, but he never
intended to let anybody know anything.

His disappearance threw Uncle Phillip into all too predictable cautions. “Lucy, I've told you, we must not pressure him. If we want to see Fergus, you must not—I've told you, we must not—”

“But I really can't understand—” she said softly.

“Incompatibility. I've told you that too.” As usual he played the adult trying to remain patient with a child. Aunt Lucy's continual refusal to absorb what he believed was simply information confounded him. Generally he was the one who stalked out of a room at the first hint of disagreement. Fergus cut himself to his father's pattern in this; he even took short hard steps out of the room just as Uncle Phillip did when he was corking his anger.

Aunt Lucy, much more tenacious than usual, held on. “What does that mean though? Do you know, Marianne?” She'd turn to me whenever I was visiting them in Nashville—living away from the Moores has its advantages—and I'd shake my head. I knew quite well what it might mean beginning with an impossible sex life. What good would it do to walk Aunt Lucy through a list of such speculations? She was mainly curious about Uncle Phillip's ideas, and it was clear he'd decided to keep those to himself. They were at an impasse. Marsh and I hit them frequently when we first married. Somehow we went on twining ourselves around these knots of disagreement.

Uncle Phillip shoved his chair away and headed for the living room where silence and the remains of the Sunday paper waited.

My grandmother Miss Kate cleared her throat as she was inclined to do before pronouncing her opinions, and commented that tomcatting apparently ran in the family, a reference to her son George's proclivities as well, a rare admission made now to protect Aunt Lucy's feelings. To
Miss Kate a trait that ran in the family was considered more understandable, even more permissible.

Aunt Lucy pushed her chair away from her end of the table, said only, “Oh, Mother!” and, carrying a dessert plate in either hand, glided out the swinging door.

So Grandmother and I were left sitting in the dining room alone which meant, she was sure, I awaited instruction. She believed, had believed for years, that Aunt Lucy couldn't stand to look truth in the face.

Miss Kate's and Aunt Lucy's truths were bound to be different. Sometimes my grandmother's own versions differed. Sometimes Fergus was a tomcat, a common fault, though only partially disdainful since she considered chasing females natural to men as well as to animals; sometimes she felt Fergus's first wife left him because he was “too much inclined to drink” although that, by itself, was not really a good reason for a divorce. My grandfather had the same inclination, and she hadn't divorced him. It was useless to remind her that divorce was much more acceptable now. That would only invoke a tirade about people making beds and refusing to lie in them although I was aware she'd been glad to have Uncle George move in with her the minute he jumped out of the bed he shared with his own first wife.

I thought Dorothy could have left Fergus for another man, not an idea I could voice without hurting Aunt Lucy who remembered her fondly. She was attractive, agreeable, sweet, a useless description, I thought, though much used by my aunt. To her “sweet” meant kind, thoughtful, someone interested in the comfort of others, all virtues she possessed, all qualities she was sure Fergus needed in a wife. As for her son being at fault, yes, he was a little impatient. She'd never seen him drink too much, nor did she think he was a woman chaser although everyone knew he liked girls. I remained skeptical. Through the years Fergus and I had learned to
accommodate each other's silences on certain subjects. I was in favor of withdrawing sometimes. After all I had married and withdrawn all the way to New Mexico to live.

Marshall and I drove to Albuquerque from our farm outside of Santa Fe and climbed on a flight to Nashville, one of those that takes you everywhere you don't want to go and ends much later than originally scheduled. A bad storm pushing in sent us all the way to Chicago. Somewhere between there and Nashville my luggage was lost.

I hadn't gone shopping for clothes in Nashville since I was in school at Vanderbilt. By now many of the stores I knew, like my family, had disappeared. Most of time I went back to Tennessee because I felt I had to. Somebody, some old-body was ill or had died. This time I was in town for pure joy. My suitcase was lost, and I didn't need a black dress; I needed a party dress.

When I lived there as a child I went shopping in department stores with my mother. Those trips had an almost ritual quality. Whenever we arrived at a ladies-ready-to-wear floor, we were invariably greeted by name.

“Mrs. Martin is here,” was all that was said, and a saleslady—Mrs. Gardener was a favorite—a middle-aged woman, slightly older than Mother, would welcome us. She knew my mother's preferences and the colors that looked best on her. She could also judge what she might find acceptable among the new fashions that year. After casting an eye on what was available to the public on the racks, we would be shown to the largest fitting room. The saleslady went to the racks and brought in a selection. She also went to the mysterious back part of the store and found dresses which had recently arrived. Neither Mother nor I questioned
that statement. We assumed that clothes were continually arriving, and that Mrs. Gardner had noticed in passing perhaps, certain dresses she'd caught a glimpse of in the back were just right for Katherine Martin, so they were brought in with the rest. Mother never went out of the fitting room to check the racks again. Once established she stayed put unless she wanted to see her choice in another light. Then she'd walk out to the three-way mirror on the floor, turn from side to side, give her reflection a hesitant, critical look, and say, “What do you think, Marianne?”

I sat in a comfortable chair near the all-powerful mirror, a chair generally set aside for accompanying husbands. I never saw one there, but I went shopping with Mother during the World War II years when husbands were seldom around.

There were only the salesladies, Mrs. Gardner and two others working at the time, who gathered to make discreet comments. That any of this was orchestrated never occurred to me until I was much older. Mother must have been more aware, but she went along with the ritual; she was a customer, and they were salesladies. Of course she detested being pushed or urged; on the other hand, she didn't mind being confirmed.

“Yes,” Mrs. Gardner would say, “I think that suits you.” Mrs. Gardner was nobody's toady. She would say if something was wrong or if the color or the cut wasn't suitable. For this, she was valuable. Her counterparts in other stores, well-dressed, middle-aged, considering women, could also say, “Let's see,” and step back, one finger pressed to a cheek, thinking with Mother about whether the dress met her needs and her standards, the subtlest sort of flattery but allowable.

I was no help at all. Anything she wore looked good to me. I watched her face for clues, and when she seemed
pleased, I was too. When perplexed, I reflected her as well as the three-way mirror did. Discrimination didn't occur until I was in my teens struggling with my own constantly changing, constantly surprising body, the period when I discovered there were clothes that would do and clothes that did things for you.

By the time I was shopping for college clothes, I had my own salesladies. Gradually they vanished to be replaced by all those totally confusing far more democratic racks where we all struggled alike. I had little time to find something to wear and didn't look forward to the search.

“Aunt Lucy,” I begged, “tell me the name of some good small women's store.”

“I can't, Marianne. You know how I hate shopping. I'll call someone and ask.”

Ever since she came back from California in the forties she'd worn slacks mainly. She had dresses; she didn't care for them. Timid, slow to make up her mind, this was one part of her life where she did what she chose. Aunt Lucy ordered her clothes from Sears.

The store she sent me to was like nothing I'd ever seen in the South. The department stores of my childhood, or even the smaller dress shops were softly lit. Only when one stepped toward the three-way mirror did the brighter light of reality glow, and even then there was a boudoir like intimacy to those places, a softness composed, in part, of curtains pulled over the dressing room windows, of deep, dark carpets, fabrics fluttering as the dresses wafted in and out of the dressing room, the mingled smells of new material, the salesladies' and customers' perfumes. Aunt Lucy's friend had suggested a shop with bleached cream-colored wooden floors
and stark off-white walls. Clothes were partially hidden in recessed alcoves. There were a few empty terra cotta pots—large with bulging sides—and a group of over-stuffed chairs in the middle of the room. Track lighting combined with daylight from two front display windows practically scoured the interior. Reminiscent of shops I'd been to in California, it could have been anywhere in New York or in Santa Fe, for that matter.

A woman dressed in a cream-colored tunic and skirt came toward me. As she stepped closer, I saw she was apparently near my own age. It's hard to tell ages when you're forty-nine. Both younger people and older ones seem younger. This smiling woman in light colored clothes was quite self-assured. Short—she'd remedied that as best she could with high heels—she had thick brown hair cut in a stylish line slanting toward her chin, dark eyes, and as she got closer, a questioning look on her face as if I had somehow startled her. Perhaps I was the first customer that day.

“You match the shop,” I said.