In those postwar days, if you got pregnant, you got married. In those days, if you got a girl pregnant you married her—that is, if you didn’t disappear, leaving no forwarding address. So Anne and Giancarlo Ruscelli were getting married.
Grandmother undertook the task of breaking the news to Spencer and Rida. She telephoned the apartment building in North Cambridge, as required, but she was too rattled to give the usual three-hour notice, time for a daughter-in-law to tidy up and ready the children and perhaps bake a little tea cake, as if those were things Mumma would have done, even with notice.
“I’m coming over,” Grandmother said. “It’s a very important matter and you know I don’t use that word lightly. Be sure Spencer is there.”
“He’s working.”
“It’s only studying and he can set it aside for an hour. I’ve been to college, I know about this.”
“I never interrupt Spencer’s work,” Mumma said.
“Just tell him I say it’s important,” Grandmother instructed, and hung up before Mumma could repeat her refusal.
Of course Mumma didn’t fetch Pops down from the room she had set aside for him, two floors above the noisy confusion of their crowded family quarters and as much a light-filled aerie as an apartment. She didn’t put away the children, either, although Jo happened to be asleep; she didn’t tidy up and she didn’t get a cake into the oven. She went ahead with whatever she was doing, and not until Grandmother had actually arrived did she put on a kettle. “It’s too early for a drink,” she told Grandmother.
“I could use one,” Grandmother said.
“All we have is beer. You’ll prefer a cup of tea.”
“Where’s Spencer?”
“Sit here in the dining room. The kitchen is a mess. You could read a story to Meg,” Mumma suggested, “while I’m busy.”
She parked Grandmother at the dining room table and returned to the kitchen. With Meg on her lap, Grandmother entered the world of the little engine that could, with its primary colors and sturdy heroine. (“One thing about your grandmother—you girls should know this about her—she was a person who read things. Where do you think your father got all his brains from? They had to come from somewhere, so whenever your grandmother had gotten herself all het up, I’d have her read to one of you to calm her down, at least enough so she could be talked to.”) After Mumma had poured cups of tea, and offered Grandmother sugar and milk to put into hers, and given Meg her own chair with a coloring book and crayons, Grandmother broke the news. “Anne has gone and done it. She’s getting married. It’s that Giancarlo man, of course, and Brundage is…Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Brundage is furious.”
“I know,” Mumma said.
“I mean—and I’m trusting you not to say a word to anyone, Rida—she has to marry him.”
“I know,” Mumma said again, because Anne had come to her for advice. (“I told her to tell her mother, and she got angry at me. I don’t know what she expected me to say. She’s a lot like her father, now I think of it. Except, she doesn’t drink the way he did.”)
“So the wedding will be almost immediate. We’ve got four and a half weeks,” Grandmother said, “and I’m going to need your help. Can I count on you?”
“I don’t know,” Mumma explained “My days are pretty full. What did you have in mind for me to do?”
“Anne has her heart set on a wedding like the one Phyllis had but with a guest list of only two hundred. You won’t be aware of this, but in our circles girls usually give their family at least a year, at least that much time, to plan a wedding. A big wedding doesn’t seem so hole-in-the-corner, which could be reason enough to indulge Anne, but four and a half weeks…Well,” with the sigh of a mother much martyred by her children, “needs must. There will be a shower, of course. A girl has to have at least one bridal shower after we announce the engagement, and we’ll also be responsible for the rehearsal dinner. The man has no family here. Fortunately, he’s not insisting on a Catholic ceremony. I don’t think I could get Brundage to set foot in a Catholic church, so at least I’m being spared that. What people will say…” Grandmother squared her shoulders and then gave Mumma her instructions: “I know just what everybody will be saying, and I personally do not plan to dignify them with any response at all. I’m going to ask you to hostess a bridal shower, as well as see to it that Spencer does everything that’s expected of him.”
Mumma considered her own plans and necessities, then thought about how she might fit this new activity into her crowded days. She could do it. “When is it?” she asked. “I have some houses to look at next week, on the Cape.”
“You don’t want to live out there, not year-round,” Grandmother said, accepting another cup of tea. “There are the schools, for one thing, and you can’t ask Spencer to commute, for another. Where do you plan for Margaret to go to school?”
“Her name is Meg.”
“Yes, I know, but her baptismal name is going to be Margaret,” Grandmother told Mumma.
“No, it isn’t. Why would I name her something nobody will ever call her?”
“Is that true of Josephine also?”
“Of course.”
“Well, dear, since they haven’t actually been baptized yet, it’s not too late to rectify that.”
“Yes they have. We had both girls done at the same time.”
“Did you? But Rida, we weren’t there.”
“When do you want me to give the bridal shower?” Mumma asked.
“The week after next, I’m afraid. The announcement will be in the paper tomorrow.”
“I can do that.”
“And you’ll help with the wedding, too, the invitations, and ordering the flowers for the groom and groomsmen, and probably with the groom’s gifts for the bride, as well, and for the groomsmen. I particularly need you to help me with the groom, because I’m practically positive the young man knows nothing of how we do weddings over here. We don’t know anything about him. Not one thing about his background, which is probably a blessing, because Italians…We know only what he tells us about himself. I don’t know, I just don’t know. Brundage is very upset, you can imagine. I can admit it to you, Rida, that Brundage is not the most broad-minded of men. Especially when it comes to who his children marry.” (“No, I didn’t take offense. Why should I? Your father was lucky to have me and he knew it.”) “Also, Brundage doesn’t care for the Italian people, I’m sorry to say. After Mussolini, and the war.”
“Maybe he’ll change his mind when he has a half-Italian grandchild,” Mumma said.
“Rida! It’s just that the young people don’t want to wait, and why should they?” Having made her admission and filed her complaint, Grandmother reassumed her impregnable cloak of denial.
“Actually, they can’t wait,” Mumma said. “That’s the actual truth.”
“You need to keep your opinions to yourself sometimes, Rida,” Grandmother counseled. “You can get a little strident about truth, and after all, the truth is a pretty flexible commodity. You know how people will talk.”
“I know people can count to nine,” Mumma said.
“Whatever that means,” Grandmother riposted. “Never mind that, because the shower has to be a week from Saturday, so I’ve talked to Jonquil Cartenbury and she’ll be your co-hostess. Because if you think about it”—Grandmother waved a hand in the general direction of the other rooms of Mumma’s apartment—“the Cartenbury house is a much more appropriate setting. You could barely squeeze eight people around this table, and besides, it’s half covered with papers.”
Mumma was happy to explain. “They’re important records: contracts with electricians and plumbers, carpenters, painters, and daily logs, projected completion dates, progress charts, receipts for payments, inspection certificates, rent receipts—”
“That’s not what I meant. No matter.”
“If a person doesn’t keep records, keep track, a person can’t say she’s doing a good job of managing. Managing anything,
I mean, not just a business.”
“You have to admit—”
“No I don’t.”
“—that you might be overdoing it,” Grandmother finished. “You are something of an over-doer, my dear. I don’t know why you need to worry about money anyway.”
“I’m not worrying, I’m managing. Making a profit.”
“You met Jonquil at my welcome-home party last summer. She’s from Virginia and knows how to do these things. I’m so pleased she’s here to help you out—that is, to help us all. You will be able to work with her, won’t you? For Anne’s sake.” She looked at Mumma. “For the sake of the family,” she amended. “Spencer’s family, and where is the boy, by the way?”
“He’s a man,” Mumma said. “I don’t disturb him when he’s working.”
“You spoil him,” Grandmother told her. “But it’s obvious how devoted to him you are. I do notice how happy you make my son.” Then Grandmother, having complimented Mumma on that area in which she felt Mumma had earned her good opinion, returned to her primary purpose. “So you will do it? Be the co-hostess, with Jonquil.”
“I’ll telephone her tonight.”
“I’d rather you went to see her today. I can drop you off. You can take the children and bring the pram so you’ll have a nice walk home. Isn’t her boy not much older than your Jo? The nanny can easily see to the children while you two girls make plans. Jonquil knows everything that needs to be done. Really, whatever you might want to say about Southerners, they know how to raise a lady. Please don’t start your quarreling with me about that, Rida, I know what you think and I’ve had too much to deal with today to be having one of your quarrels about what is important in the world.” (“She really thought I had ever quarreled with her, which I never did. Your grandmother didn’t know what people were really like. She only knew how they were supposed to act.”)
Grandmother had one final request. “I need Spencer to be one of the ushers, since Giancarlo’s family won’t be there—which is a blessing—and I have no idea who he’ll have for a best man. I’m a little concerned, I have to tell you that.”
“You could have a small wedding,” Mumma suggested.
“Don’t think I wouldn’t prefer it. But you know what Anne is like when she makes up her mind she wants something.”
For once Mumma chose not to say what she was thinking and chose instead to offer comfort. “I’m sure it will be a very successful occasion, Dorothy.” (“When I called your grandmother by her first name, well, I can tell you, I felt like I was throwing myself off that high cliff in Acapulco into deep rocky water. I had to make myself do it. I wasn’t even in my mid-twenties, remember, still just a girl, young. Or maybe it was like making myself swallow something really strange, like the first time I tasted caviar—and never again, I can tell you girls that. But really, it was like making myself go to the doctor for a shot, saying her name like that, Dorothy, to her face. And she didn’t like it any better than I did, I promise you. It was almost fun, watching your grandmother’s face when I called her by name.”)
• • •
In my opinion, that bridal shower was the actual starting point for the rivalry between Mumma and Jonquil Cartenbury, or maybe it would be more accurately called a feud, or even a duel, or perhaps simply a general and inclusive mutual dislike that went on for over forty years, almost—although not entirely—without interruption. The antipathy on which it was based had been planted at their first meeting on the Cape, which also transpired at Grandmother’s hand; a seed of mutual ill-will germinated over the months when both Mumma and Mrs. Cartenbury were wives of students at Harvard graduate schools and reached full flower at Aunt Anne’s shower. It was the most natural thing in the world, a contest between those two women.
Jonquil Cartenbury was everything Mumma wasn’t: the mother of a son, the wife of a decorated hero, the darling of her in-laws, descendant of an old, if regrettably Southern, family; she was a pretty girl with pretty manners, who dressed well, not to mention being a college graduate. Moreover, she was a person who disclaimed credit for achievements: “I didn’t do anything really, it was not one little bit of trouble.” She disclaimed even compliments: “This old thing?” She kept her eyes modestly cast down and her voice openly admiring of others and was regularly to be found at stage center, in a leading role.
That Mumma was ambitious to outshine Jonquil goes without saying. During the first winter of graduate school, while Mumma was having Jo and moving her family into its temporary apartment, and overseeing a complicated schedule of renovations, Jonquil Cartenbury established herself at the social center of the Harvard graduate schools, settling around herself like the skirts of her wedding gown (visible in the photograph so proudly displayed on top of the grand piano in the double living room of the Cartenburys’ Cambridge home) a circle of young women to admire and envy her. Mumma, having no natural talent for admiration or for envy, was not a member of that inner circle. Jonquil Cartenbury took Mumma’s absence for criticism; she understood Mumma’s single-minded self-satisfaction as dislike. Mumma was always pleased to boast, “I was a thorn in her side, from the first.”
Mumma accepted Grandmother’s offer of a ride to the discreetly magnificent edifice on one of those small shady streets between Brattle and Huron, but she declined to be escorted in. “I’ll be happy to stay and ease any awkwardness, Rida,” Grandmother offered, as Mumma extracted the pram from the trunk of the Lincoln. “That won’t be necessary,” Mumma responded. “You should go now.” In the large, flower-filled entry, Mumma’s two girls were taken into the care of the nanny, a person brought over from England for the important purpose of caring for Jonquil’s son and, as Jonquil confided prettily when she greeted Mumma with a significant glance at the nanny, “his little brother, in not very many months. It’s certainly in the air, isn’t it?”
“What’s in the air?” demanded Mumma, who met any challenge head-on.
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just my silly way of talking. You don’t have to worry about a thing, because Nanny is very good with children. Your girls will love her,” Jonquil said with a bright and welcoming smile.
Mumma had her doubts but held her tongue. (“Making it twice in one day,” as she told the story. “Something of a record,” we remarked.) Without comment, she watched her two children being led and carried away up a broad staircase. (“Was Mrs. Cartenbury doused in that perfume she always wore?” Amy asked. “What was it, was it Chanel or Guerlain? I really remember that perfume.”)
Mumma gave her hat and coat to a hovering maid and put her gloves in her purse, which she kept with her. She did not look around the entry hall with interest and admiration; she was not curious about the portraits and landscapes on the living room walls nor the photographs set out in silver frames on the piano. While the two young mothers talked, seated in armchairs facing each other in front of a bay window that looked out over flowerbeds where gardeners were at work, tea was served from a Sèvres set. Jonquil poured, offering little crustless cucumber sandwiches and tiny pastel squares of petits fours.
Mumma declined refreshment. Or, rather, she attempted to decline. “No, no tea, thank you,” she said, and her hostess smiled benignly, “Of course you do, will you have milk or lemon?”
“I’m not hungry,” Mumma said, and her hostess did not insist, agreeing, “I know, isn’t it lucky these are so little and light?”
It wasn’t really any kind of a conference at all, as Mumma soon realized. Grandmother had drawn up a guest list, Jonquil had decided on a menu, Aunt Anne’s pregnancy determined the date and time, and for everything else Jonquil had the answer. “I know just who will do perfect flowers,” she said, and, “I know just the right place for invitations and since it’s all happening so fast,” she said, and paused, waiting. “I picked some out I know you’ll just love, because we don’t have time to really decide things together, do we?” Pause. “To really work on a shower would take, why, months.” And Jonquil smiled, waiting.
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Mumma said nothing, and continued to say nothing until she finally ended the silence with the suggestion that they could use the time that afternoon for addressing envelopes, and she would be happy to drop them off at the post office, on her way home.
“I don’t know, Rida.” Jonquil became diplomatic. “In our schools, I mean at home, in Virginia, I mean, you know, they didn’t always teach us the same things you Northerners think are important. I do understand that. I have realized that. Although, now I recollect myself, you aren’t a Bostonian either. We are the both of us outsiders, aren’t we?”
“What is it?” Mumma asked. “Do you think I won’t be able to copy names and addresses correctly?”
“Goodness, no. I have certainly noticed how smart you are. Why, everybody notices that, my goodness. But—I doubt—did they teach you the Palmer method? I mean, calligraphy.”
“Not if it’s the one with all the loops, they didn’t. But I write a clear hand and I think we should get something done, since I’m here. I’ve had enough tea for one afternoon.” (“Maybe it was my own fault, too. If people don’t get along with you like that, it’s partly your own fault. I know that and I accept my share of the responsibility for all of the bad feeling between me and Jonquil Cartenbury. I won’t deny it: The woman has always been my Achilles’ heel.”)
“It’s only that I don’t want you troubling yourself. That’s all it is,” Jonquil said to Mumma. “I know how busy you must be, with that whole apartment house you’ve bitten off, and the two baby girls besides, because you don’t have any help at home, do you? So you can just leave everything to me. Why, I have nothing better to do with my time,” she said. “Really, there’s no need for you to be bothered.”