“Yes, I was,” Eleanor said, immediately interested.
“Oh, that was a love. I don’t think in my eight marriages I ever loved a man like Gabby loved that one. It was more than love, it was sheer passion. I think she began to lose herself a little, she loved him so much. I used to warn her about that. I used to say, ‘Gabby, it’s not very wise to love a man more than he loves you.’ But she insisted that his passion for her was just as strong. I always wondered how that could be true, since he wouldn’t divorce his wife. It’s not as though it was hard to get a divorce then. I have always believed that if that man hadn’t died, he would have broken Gabby’s heart eventually. Just like Matthew White did, when Gabby was in her last year of college. Did she ever tell you about Matthew White?”
For someone who failed to mention to her college-freshman daughter that she’d be out of town over Christmas, it seemed that Ceola was awfully intimate with Gabby’s life. Ceola had all the details about her childhood as well, from the time Gabby lost her first tooth to the time she got her first period during the week the girls’ gym class had swimming. Eleanor had suspicions that Ceola could be making a lot of this stuff up, but on those things Eleanor could personally verify, she seemed to be right on. It was fascinating, Elly thought, that this woman who never gave of herself could cherish so many tiny details about her only child. It might have been nice if Ceola had even once called Gabby on her birthday. Or attended one of the childrens’ graduations.
But it was the small details of Gabby’s life that drew Eleanor to Ceola.
Ceola, for her part, had the instincts of a jungle cat. She knew who to approach, how to approach them, and timed it all perfectly. She would never suggest that Eleanor wash out her undies for her. Nor would she even mention to Sable that she needed a ride somewhere, for Sable still did not have a car at the house and only went out with Jeff. She wouldn’t expect breakfast from Barbara Ann, chats about fashion with Beth or long conversations about her many marriages with Sable. Yet she had someone doing for her everything she needed to have done to make her comfortable. Before she’d been there three days the women were asking each other things like, “Has anyone fixed a plate for Ceola’s lunch?” “Does Ceola need to go anywhere today?” “It’s time for Ceola’s soap operas, where is she?”
To Ceola’s credit, she knew a few things about being a houseguest. She had developed the fine art of being invisible so that she was only a lot of trouble some of the time. She could spend a long time in the bathroom, bathing, powdering, primping and perfuming, but she seemed to do it only when no one else needed to be in there. She took long rests on the deck while the women were working. She kept the volume of her soaps down low and dozed on the sofa while she watched, disturbing no one. She retired early, even taking a dinner tray to her room at times so that the women didn’t feel the constant drain of her neediness through their community meals. And she rose late. For one person to have kept up with all her needs—her bubble bath, her afternoon sherry and then tea, her trips to the beauty parlor, her laundry, her breakfast, lunch and dinner—would have been exhausting, and everyone wondered how Gabby did it. But for the four women, plus Ed and Sarah, to cater to her was really nothing at all.
There was one danger, however. Ceola was very comfortable with the arrangement. And her feelings toward Martin’s cardplaying were not softening.
Barbara Ann’s first dinner out with her family was very uncomfortable. The boys stared at their plates and had trouble answering her questions with more than one-word replies. She figured them out pretty quickly. It wasn’t their severe pain at having been abandoned by their chief cook and bottle washer. It was anxiety. They were afraid that one wrong move would set her off and she’d unload on them in the restaurant. She knew that was it the second time one of them said, ‘Don’t get mad, but…” She was in the lesson-teaching mode, after all. She’d staged the big speech and walkout. Anything could happen.
The second dinner with them was better. They talked a little more. They even laughed over a couple of things. When one of them started to say something and then quickly rethought it, biting it back, she decided to console them a little. “Take it easy, guys. I’m not mad anymore.”
“You’re not?” Bobby asked.
“No, I’m not mad. I was mad, but I did what I had to do and I’m not mad now.”
“Then are you coming home pretty soon?”
“No,” she said firmly, but nicely. “No, I’m not. I’m not mad anymore but I’m never going back to the way things were. If that upsets you, I’m sorry. But it just isn’t fair for me to do all the work while everyone else enjoys what I’ve done.”
“What if we promise to help more?” Billy asked her.
“Well, there’s something to think about, Billy. Now, I know this is going to be hard to grasp, you being males poisoned by the hormone testosterone, but just try it on for size. How are you helping me by washing the plate you ate from? And how are you helping me by washing your own dirty clothes? See, you guys still have the idea that you’re somehow helping me each time you do something for yourselves.”
“But Mom, you’ve always taken care of us,” Billy said pleadingly. “Don’t you want to anymore?”
Something about that touched her heart. “Sure, Bill. But I want to take care of you in a new way now, a grown-up way. That’s how it’s always been, through all the species. I only fed you until you could feed yourself. I wiped your butt until you learned how to do it yourself—”
“In his case, longer than usual,” Bobby said, laughing and punching a brother.
“Listen up, Bobby, this is also for you,” Barbara Ann said. “I dressed you until you could dress yourself and I even stopped shopping for your clothes when you developed your own tastes. I drove you until you got a license and then a car. See, in all areas of your development, you gained your independence and moved on when you didn’t need me to do it for you anymore. Except one area—the crud work, the stuff that’s no fun. The cleaning, cooking, laundering, bill paying, yard work, painting, putting away. You’re grown now. We still love each other, still need each other for lots of things—for love, emotional support, friendship. But we should have grown past the stage where one of us gets to be master and the other slave.”
“Mom,” Joe said earnestly, “we’re cleaning the house. You should see it!”
“And do you want me to come home so you can stop?”
He was stuck for an answer for a second. He hesitated too long, long enough for Bobby to roll his eyes. Then he said, “No!”
“Good, then you’re making great progress. You keep it up for a while, till you get used to having it nice, keeping it nice and liking it nice. Then we’ll talk.”
“Mom, listen, we—”
“That’s enough,” Mike said. “Your mother thinks we have a lot to prove and maybe she’s right. Let’s move on to something else. Tell her about school, Matt.”
“I’m not in school right now! I’m working full-time this summer!”
“Good,” Mike said. “Tell her about work.”
At her third dinner with them, they didn’t discuss the house at all. She wore a new dress, two sizes smaller than the clothes she had left in. She and Sable had been eating low-calorie food and exercising in the mornings with some trim blonde on a cable channel. Barbara Ann had been trying to lose weight for years, but had always been driven back to the Snicker Doodles by exhaustion, or frustration, or just plain inertia.
“I don’t know what it is, Barbara Ann, but you just look more beautiful to me each time I see you,” Mike said.
“Mom, are you happier now than you were with us?” Joe asked. “You look a lot happier.”
“You guys are such idiots,” Matt said. “She’s only lost about twenty-five pounds, that’s all. Jeez.”
“Actually, it’s only twelve. But have you ever seen twelve pounds of lard? It’s massive.”
“Really? Why, sure,” Mike said. “Barbara Ann, honey, you look just fantastic. Lik
e a young girl.”
“Mom, what’s going to happen about that pot the police caught you with?” Bobby asked. And then he looked down at his plate immediately.
“Which one of your friends left it in the garage, Bobby? Was it Jared? Brian? Seth?”
“Seth. But I really didn’t know. I mean, when he said he needed to store a little pot, I thought he meant like a joint, an ounce. Mom, I had absolutely no idea—”
“An ounce here, an ounce there…. It sure isn’t harmless stuff, no matter how little your doses are. But, never mind the lecture, I think I said my piece on that. On the charges, I’m still hoping to get lucky. My lawyer thinks he’ll be able to get the charges reduced to a misdemeanor, if not thrown out entirely. It seems they had no probable cause to search my car. There is a technicality, however. The police are entitled to search any moving vehicle whenever they want to. And then there’s that other little technicality—it was sitting right in the backseat. The bong was in plain view. It’s all a little sketchy. But what I think is going on behind the scenes is this—the prosecutor knows I’m not a doper or a seller of dope. He also knows I have four sons between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one and that those sons have literally dozens of friends. The lawyer told me that the prosecutor might go after me just as an example. It seems that even if your sons are the ones in possession of a large supply of drugs, you have no excuse to keep it, hide it or transport it. You’re supposed to call the police, not deliver it yourself. But, since I have an expensive lawyer who gets a lot of dealers off of far worse crimes, he thinks the prosecutor will try to cut a deal that gets me off his calendar and out of his hair. Works for me.”
“Who’s paying for this expensive lawyer?” Mike asked.
“Sable, of course. She also paid my bail.”
“We’ll repay her,” he said, stiffening, his pride hurt. He had not been prepared for how complicated and dangerous this whole thing had gotten.
“We’ll work it all out, Mike. Don’t worry. Sable has far greater problems than money. She knows I’d never take advantage of her and she’s glad she can help. When you think about it, that’s the least of our problems.”
“Mom,” Bobby attempted, sheepish. “Is there any chance you could go to jail?”
“For felony drug possession?” She took a bite of her salad, which was all she seemed to eat lately. “Uh-huh. Seven to ten. Women’s federal prison.”
He visibly winced. “I won’t let that happen, Mom. I’ll go to them myself, tell them the truth. I’ll tell them it was mine, that you were trying to protect me. There is nothing, nothing I won’t do.”
“Bobby, why would you do that? I think I have this pretty well under control.”
“Mom, I am not letting you go to jail over my asshole ex-friend’s pot!”
“But why?” she persisted.
“Because that would kill me! It would kill me to have you go to jail!”
“What if it had been my pot, Bobby? How would you feel about me going to jail then?”
“God! Get serious! Do you think there’s any way I could live with my mother in jail?”
“Probably not. ’Cause there’s no way I could live with my son going to jail. Just so we understand each other.”
He fell silent and his cheeks grew crimson. Matt elbowed him and whispered, “Dickhead.” Billy glared at him, his eyes hateful. Yep, pretty dangerous stuff, that pot. It could tear up your family real good.
By the end of that dinner with Mike and the boys, Barbara Ann realized something. Her few words uttered at that weekly visitation were having more impact than twenty years of yelling. They were listening to her. They were slowly beginning to understand about the crud work, about everyone helping everyone and about the dangerous situation that had been created by some stored marijuana. Some nonverbal stuff was going on, too. They were thinking about how it was she could look so much better, be so much calmer, when she wasn’t living in that house with them. Maybe they would accidentally absorb the fact that her anxiety was finally gone now that she could keep up with her workload. Or that her self-esteem was finally healthy now that she wasn’t the only giver in a houseful of takers.
But the one thing she doubted they were getting was how much she missed them. God, she ached for them. Sometimes, very late at night, when Gabby’s house was finally quiet, she would cry into her pillow. She found herself wanting to see how the new plane repairs were coming along. She wanted to hear that thumping noise that was a bass guitar. She wanted to see them inhale their dinner and go crazy, kissing her and whirling her around because she’d found the time to make pies. Mostly, she wanted to touch them. When she’d wander from her desk to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and find one of them at the breakfast bar eating cereal, just waking up at noon, she would put down her cup and give those young, smooth, strong shoulders a little rub or tousle the bed-head.
They were a very affectionate family, always had been. That was Mike. He was very physical, with her, with his sons. Mike still embraced his boys, whether they liked it or not. He still kissed their cheeks. Barbara Ann didn’t have to force this physical affection on them. They still hugged her, kissed her, every time they said goodbye. It was no different when they parted after their third “date” for dinner. Each one, in his turn, embraced her very desperately, as if she were going off to the electric chair. Each one kissed her cheeks, both sides, reluctant to leave her. They told her they loved her—“Love you, Mom.” “Love you, Mom.” “Love you.” “Love you, Mom. I miss you a lot.”—and then went off in their various vehicles. Out for the evening. Or home, to forage for snacks and watch TV.
Mike had picked her up and was taking her back to Gabby’s. When they were in the car alone, she noticed he just sat there behind the wheel, not starting the engine. “I gotta know, Barbara Ann,” he said, staring into his lap. “Are you a lot happier now?”
“Well, I’m content in a lot of ways. We all help each other. No one has the lion’s share of work. It’s equal. Different, but equal. It’s the first time since I met and married you that I haven’t worked night and day. It’s like going to camp.”
“But are you happier?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m happier about the workload and I’m far less tense. But I miss you and the boys so much, sometimes I just cry.”
He looked at her. “You do?”
“Yeah. Sure. Mike, I’ve talked to you every day. I’ve told you I miss you and love you. I’ve told you why I moved out—I can’t take the mess anymore. I could somehow keep up with four little boys. Don’t ask me how. I was younger, stronger, had more time, more energy. I wasn’t working full-time then. But four men? Ahhh! They’re more demanding, messier, eat more, want more, need more…and my God, they cost a fortune! I have to work just to keep up with the car insurance, much less the grocery bill. And I’m older, have less energy, less time. I was worn-out. I could have stayed, I guess, till you killed me.”
“Oh, Barbara Ann….”
“Well, there was the other alternative. I could have tried to find a way to live in a constant mess, up to my nostrils in dirty clothes and dirty dishes. But Mike, I don’t want to. Maybe that’s an okay way for you to live, but I don’t want to. Call me selfish.”
“Barbara Ann, are you going to divorce me?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead really.”
“Is there…is there another…guy?”
“Another guy?!” Her voice was shocked, shrill. “Good Lord, are you serious? I just made my escape from five of you slobs. You think I’d want to tote that barge and lift that bale for another one?” She couldn’t help herself, she laughed. The thought had never occurred to her! Jesus, maybe that was the answer! A neat, anal-retentive guy who worked out at the gym and had gourmet cooking as a hobby! With all the time she spent at the grocery store, she should have met him by now if he was out there. “Another guy. That’s hysterical.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s so goddamn hysterical. I mean, you
don’t seem to be suffering too much from…you know…not getting any.”
She just giggled. Her head bent, she rubbed the bridge of her nose and giggled.
“Well, what’s so goddamn funny? We always had a pretty good, you know, sex life.”
“We sure did. I only had three periods in five years.”
“Well, either you’re doing pretty good without any or you got another guy!”
“To tell you the truth, I miss it a lot. But every time I remember sticking to the kitchen floor or scraping dried-on-toothpaste-spit out of a sink, the old urge just leaves me.” She sighed. “That’s nothing to what happens to my sex drive when I think of four boys getting stoned on pot instead of working and going to school and using those fine minds and beautiful bodies of theirs.”
“Barbara Ann, are you ever coming home?”
She turned toward him and put her arms around his neck. She turned his face toward her and made him look at her. She kissed his lips. “I love you, Mike Vaughan. And I love them—enough to go to jail for them, if necessary. Are you really so completely blind to the squalor of that house that you think it would take something more than that to drive me away? Oh, Mike! How bad does it have to get?”
He kissed her. Then he chuckled against her lips. “It got pretty bad, to tell you the truth. Even I noticed.”
“I know. I went back there to pick up a few things.”
“Hey, that was only a few days. You should have seen it after a week.”
She shuddered. She couldn’t even think about it.
“It’s okay now, though,” he said.
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Your idea of okay and my idea of okay are pretty different.”
“No, really. They’ve been pretty good. I’ve been pretty good. It’s coming around.”
“I’ve seen the result when they’ve said they cleaned their rooms. Please. Don’t insult me.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. And I do love you. You’re all the man I’ve ever needed, Mike. You’re just a slob.”