I visited a trailer park today. I turned down the gravel road, drove slowly, looking at the way the trailers were all decorated: curtains, little picket fences protecting a line of garden, an attempt at a patio under an awning. So many of them seemed so desperate to look as though they weren’t trailers at all. And I wondered why those people just didn’t get a co-op, some nice little place that didn’t have wheels. There was a woman about my age outside hanging wash on a miniature clothesline. I pulled up, got out and introduced myself, said I was just having a look around. Go right ahead, she said, you can look at my spot all you want. She was one of those tough-but-kind people, hard line of black eye makeup, smoker’s breath, a fondness for hair spray—and a need, too, what with the severe French twist she wore. She had a pretty spectacular figure, if everything I saw was real. She was wearing silver backless heels, those tight black stretchy pants that look like a second skin, a short-sleeved blue sweater, large silver hoop earrings. She hiked her empty pink basket up against her hip, asked if I were considering living here. I said yes I was. She told me it was a quiet place, there was a duck pond down in the middle of their little private park, a Laundromat on site, though the dryer was pretty regularly out of order. Uh-huh, I said. Grocery store just a mile and half down the road, she said, King Savings, great beef but stay away from their chicken. Oh, I said, uh-huh. And then she said, “You’re not really looking to live here, are you?” I said well, no, probably not. She said she didn’t think so, said I didn’t look like the type. I said is that right. She chuckled and then coughed a few times into her fist, bad smoker’s cough. Then she said yeah, that was damn right, laughed again. She was looking off to the side like she was sharing the joke with an invisible ally. I said what type did I look like and she said I looked like the type that went down and volunteered at some suicide prevention center in order to save my own life. Handed over my Joan and Davids to the Goodwill with a sense of regret that they would not be recognized as the great shoes they were. I stood stock-still for a minute, trying to figure this out, because it was so surprising, and because although it was pretty nasty, it was said in such a friendly way. I thought, where did this woman come from? How did she end up here?
She lit a cigarette and offered me one, and though I don’t smoke, I took one. Salem. An awful mix of foul and mint. I had a sudden urge to get my hair dyed platinum.
We sat at her little picnic table and she said, Not much of a smoker either, are you, Nan? I said no, but that I’d always wanted to be, that it always looked pretty good to me, sexy, too. She said it was sexy, watch this, and she French-inhaled while she stared me straight in eye.
Then all of a sudden I asked her, I said, what did you want to do? Oh hell, she said, and stared off into the distance. Then, looking back at me, “Everything.” I asked her name and she said Susan Littletree and I said is that your married name and she said yes; and no, her husband was not Native American. What he was, was gone. I said well. She said you’d like to see inside the trailer, wouldn’t you? I said yes, I would. She said come ahead but don’t get freaked out at the statues of Mary, it’s just a joke. Then, looking over her shoulder as she climbed the steps up, No offense if you’re a Mary fan. A believer, one of them. More power to you if you are, she said. You got something.
It was amazing how when you got in that trailer, it seemed like a house. It was clean in there, which surprised me—I’d expected dirty dishes all over, newspapers on the floor. She gave me a tour, showed me her blue bedroom—flowered wallpaper, pink sweetheart roses in a vase at the bedside, along with six or seven Mary statues. The bathroom had gold fixtures, and a magazine rack discreetly off to the side, I saw Bon Appetit in there. She had burnt-orange kitchen counters, dark wooden cabinets, a little window over the sink with white ruffled curtains. There was a booth to eat in, striped brown and white fabric. She looked at her watch, asked me would I like a tuna sandwich, it was close enough to dinnertime. I said I would, but to let me help make it, and I stood at her tiny counter chopping celery and sweet pickles and hard-boiled eggs while she mixed the tuna with the mayonnaise. I was so glad it was Hellmann’s, the real thing, none of that mincing fake stuff that you always try so hard to pretend is fine, even though your taste alarm is going berserk.
I said it was awfully nice of her, me just showing up and her offering me a meal. Oh well, she said, she’d always thought that was the way it should be, some people wandering around and other people taking care of them, think of Jesus. I said pardon me? and she said think of Jesus, how he wandered around and people fed him. Washed his feet, too, I said. Come to bad end, though, didn’t he, she said, and I’m afraid we started laughing, which made me feel badly and also a little superstitious because if there is all that heaven and hell and accounting stuff, God was shaking his head.
We sat at her table for a while after we ate and she told me her husband had left her three years ago, took off with her best friend. Susan sold their house and bought this trailer, thinking she’d live here a little while, then move on. Only she hadn’t left yet. She worked as a receptionist at a car dealership, got hit on by the salesmen, brought one home occasionally, kicked him out the next morning or even that same night, depending on his level of skill and/or his marital status. She’d heard that Trudy, the woman her husband ran off with, had gotten ovarian cancer. I said that must feel very odd, that probably she felt a weird kind of pity, a reluctant, confused kind; and she said no, she felt a full-blown pity, nothing confused about it, she felt a terrible sadness about the whole damn thing. “I’d go down there and take care of her if she asked me to,” she said. “It’s for sure he ain’t gonna do it right. She’ll see that, if she hasn’t already. ‘Where’s my dinner?’ he’ll be saying. ‘What, you can’t even make dinner?’”
We went shopping, drove over to a huge mall. I told her I wanted to buy her something. She said all right. We looked at all kinds of things, and she settled on a turquoise nightgown and matching robe, on sale, and a new potato peeler. That was all she’d let me get her. I got a few books, a new pair of shoes—she’d got me going with that talk about Joan and Davids. I liked her so much, everything about her, and at one point I asked if she’d like to come along for a while, that I’d pay her way back home from any place we got to. She said well where was I going? I said nowhere. Anywhere. I was just going around, seeing. She thought about it, then said, hell, she couldn’t leave, she’d lose her damn job. I said oh, you can get another one, jobs like that are easy to get. And she cooled then, looked me in the eye, said, you don’t know a thing about it, Nan.
I took her home, then drove another fifty miles in the dark, thinking oh well, it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway, thinking that the purpose of this trip was to spend a lot of time alone, not to start insulating myself from all I might see. The radio was playing a lot of old songs, Frank Sinatra when he was skinny, Tony Bennett, Patti Page. It’s good to be in a car, the dark around you, when songs like that are on. I’m getting used to driving so much. Seems like it’s part of me, now. I wake up and think, Go.
I know my own luck. I know how rare it is for a person to be able to do this. And I know more and more what I’m doing it for. I feel a kind of strength starting to happen that is wholly legitimate, that is not some trapping I wear until it falls off. It is as though the thing has roots, and seeks the sun with its face turned toward it. And I know I never would have found it without leaving.
Once I took a job on the community newspaper, writing a weekly column. “Nan’s Notes on Life,” it was called, silly. Well, no it was not. The editor there, a nice woman, told me I had real talent. I told Martin and he said, “Who said that?” I told him, and he said, “Oh.” And the bottom fell out. What I am seeing now is that it never was up to him. He could have been more generous. He could have been more sensitive. But how I felt, that was not up to him. I only let it be. No more. Perhaps it will be a relief for him not to have to decide for me how I feel. I should think it would be.
For now, the pleasure of heavy blankets and cream-colored sheets, a room-service menu that I intend to study for the best choice in breakfasts. Tomorrow I will make the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
I am so much farther away than I thought I’d go.
Dear Ruthie,
I don’t think I’ll be able to express just how much our conversation tonight meant to me. You have no idea how frightened I was to call you, how ready I was for accusations, protestations, questions that I could not answer with any grace or even any legitimacy. But you were so—well, I don’t even know the word for it. Calm. Unsurprised. Supportive. Interested. Thank you, Ruthie.
I’m glad you’re checking in on Dad. He pretends to not need much, but he does. Don’t worry about him eating the same thing every night. This is what he does when I go away. When I went to Aunt Bernice’s funeral and stayed with Grandma for a week, I found a stack of Hungry Man frozen-dinner cartons in the garbage when I got home. He’d eaten the same kind every night, I think he likes the Salisbury steak, in fact I think he eats two of them at a time. He’s all right in that department. What he needs is a kind of reassurance. We are what he checks himself against, you and I. So if you call every few days and just let him talk, that would be nice. He’ll tell you about his job and so on, just let him go and then tell him you’ll be calling back soon. He’ll be fine. He has a bit of a relationship with the neighbors, he likes to go out and inspect his lawn and chat with them for a bit while he has his evening coffee, oftentimes he likes to drive to the Dunkin’ Donuts to get it, they know him there, and he takes a particular kind of pride in that. “Don’t even say my order,” he says. “I walk in and they pour it up.” And of course he has his television shows. I’m writing him every day, as he told you. I’m glad he’s saving the letters.
I’ll be in Minnesota tomorrow. We’ve never been there. I hear the people are very friendly. I’ll let you know. I will let you know everything I can, Ruthie. Isn’t it funny, the two of us thinking so much the same thing all this time, and neither of us saying much about it.
All your life, Ruthie, when I thought about you, I thought, oh, this is her best time. But then I kept changing my mind, thinking, no, now is her best time. And here it is, happening again.
You are always in my thoughts. When you were little, I knew your whereabouts at any given moment. Now that you are a young woman and off on your own, I still always know where you are, because I keep you in my heart. Don’t give me your don’t-be-so-mushy lecture. It won’t do a bit of good.
When I come home, let’s make everything we love and eat it all at once. It will be even better than that pie party we had. I still remember that, do you? You were six, and you and I stood at the head of a long, long table we’d rented that was just covered with pies. My God, it was an extraordinary sight. It was beautiful. Forty-seven guests, all showing up with their favorites, some people with two kinds, they couldn’t decide what to make. Theresa Zinz made the best lemon meringue pie I ever tasted, nothing I’ve had since has ever come close, people were buzzing around her like bees, but she wouldn’t part with the recipe, which frankly I thought was small-minded. But poor Ida Young, nobody wanted her rum raisin but her. I remember thinking, what a fabulous idea you’d had, just … pie. You should hold that close, Ruthie. You should never lose that, that sense that an impulse can become a real thing.
Watch Nightline with Dad if you decide to come home for a visit. You won’t hear a word Ted Koppel says, because Dad will be talking over him the whole time, setting him straight. But it’s a comfort to your father to have someone listen to him, suggesting by their silence that what he says is true.
I’m buying souvenirs for both of you. I got Dad a pair of moccasins with Corvettes beaded onto the fronts. Very attractive. They’ll go well with the Dopey T-shirt you brought him back from Disneyland. He wears that shirt every time it’s clean, wears it to bed, did you know?
I’ll call you again, soon. It’s nice to know you’re there, Ruthie. Always has been.
Love,
Mom
Dear Martin,
Today as I drove, a patch of sun lay against my throat. At first it felt warm and comforting; then it began to feel too hot. There was no way for me to adjust the visor to block the light, so I put my hand there, and it got hot, too. And I thought of Sam Kearny, you remember how he had to get radiation to his throat? and I wondered if it burned him and then I thought, I hope I don’t have to get that. Sometimes when I wake up at night it’s to do an inventory of what might happen, how I might go. This is not just a function of my age, I know; it used to happen with some regularity when I was in my mid-twenties, not too long after Ruthie was born. I’d wake up and think, “But wait. This won’t last. I’ll have to die.” I think it was because Ruthie was so important, and I wanted to stay forever to make sure she was all right forever.
Back then, when I had those anxious nights, I used to get up very carefully so as not to wake you, and go to watch Ruthie sleep. She was so little then, not even two, still in a crib, and she slept with her butt up in the air, her arm around her bedraggled Doggie. I would hear her soft breathing, see the dim outline of her toys scattered around her room. The white rocker I’d nursed her in was still in the corner, the curtains I’d made her were hanging there, just as they did in the daytime. Being in her room always worked to calm me down. I would cover her again—her blanket was always off her—and pick up one of her toys, sit in the rocker with it, move back and forth in the ancient rhythm. I would think, tomorrow I will give her some ABC soup for lunch in her blue bowl, and I’ll give her little squares of toast with it; and for dessert, some vanilla yogurt with strawberries sliced on top. After her nap, we will walk to the library and look for birds’ nests in the bushes—she liked to find them, she always asked was there a mommy and a daddy that lived there, and this always made me think, I can never get a divorce. Not that I thought about it so much then. I did think about it later, though I only told you about it once. Do you remember that morning? Ruthie was eight years old, off to school, and you were leaving for work in one of the suits you’d just bought—a very nice Italian silk, I remember it was a wonderful taupe color with a minute pattern, your cologne was fabulous—and I was sitting in the chair in my bathrobe with my terrible coffee breath and I said to you, Martin, I’m too lonely. And you said, Oh Jesus, Nan, not now. I said, Martin, I need romance. And you said, So have an affair. I looked up at you and I said, You bastard, I want a divorce. And you looked at your watch, and I really think if I’d had a gun I would have shot you. You said you had to go, you were late, we’d talk that night, but we didn’t.
You never knew this, but the reason we didn’t talk is that I went to lunch with one of my old girlfriends that day and she told me how much trouble she was having with her husband. By comparison, we seemed great. I remember that after that lunch I went to the grocery store and bought a fancy cut of beef, made a wine/mushroom sauce for it that was quite good. And that night, when we were watching television in our pajamas, you covered me with a blanket. We’d forgiven each other, and we lay comfortable in the groove of our life together.
We’ve become quite good at forgiving each other by now, have you noticed? Sometimes I want to say to people considering divorce from a marriage that’s only vaguely bad, Oh, just wait. It just takes a lot of time, that’s all. You’ll see. Later, you’ll be sitting together and you’ll see the small lines starting in each other’s faces, and though your hands may be in your laps they will also be reaching out to touch those lines with a tenderness you weren’t sure was in you. You’ll think, Oh well, all right. You’ll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you’ve ever had. It’s like the way you have to be at least forty before a red pepper sliced in half can take your breath away. Do you know what I mean, Martin? A certain richness happens only later in life, I guess it’s a kind of mellowing. And now when I think of dying I think, Oh not now, not when I’m just start
ing to see. And I also think, don’t let it be from something where I have to get my throat radiated. Don’t let it be from something that makes me have a lot of pain. Don’t let it be from something where I become a vegetable, or a burden in some other way. Let it be this way: Let me be eighty-eight. Let me have just returned from the hairdresser. Let me be sitting in a lawn chair beside my garden, a large-print book of poetry in my hands. Let me hear the whistle of a cardinal and look up to find him and feel a sudden flutter in my chest and then—nothing. And, as long as I’m asking, let me rise up over my own self, saying, “Oh. Ah.”
Fifty years old. It is an impossible age in many ways. Not old. Not young. Not old, no. But oh, not young. What it is, is being in the sticky middle, setting one gigantic thing aside in order to make room for the next gigantic thing, and in between, feeling the rush of air down the unprotected back of the neck. I know that the transition is scary and full of awkwardness and pain—mental and physical. These dropping levels of hormones leave damage behind, like bad tenants on moving day who wreck the walls carrying things out. But once I get to the other side, I think I might be better than ever before. That’s what I keep hearing. And when I think of it, that’s what I’ve seen.
Have you ever sat by a group of older women out together at a restaurant, Martin, who are so obviously enjoying each other, who seem so oblivious to what used to weigh down so heavily on them? All of them wearing glasses to look at the menu, all ordering for themselves and then checking to see what the rest got. It is a formidable camaraderie I’ve seen among older women; I do look forward to that. I just wish I could cross over a little faster, I wish that this part of watching things go would not be so hard. Although maybe their leaving deserves to be mourned. Maybe mourning is the cleansing act that makes room for what follows.